Santa Lives

I maintained Santa was real despite what literally every second grade classmate told me, resigning myself to his non-existence only when, after much earnest questioning, my mother cracked. Up until that moment, she’d had me convinced that my classmates were a bunch of faithless cynics. My initial selfish disappointment morphed quickly into desperation that my little sister keep her childlike faith.

Suzanne was four, and I was on a mission. I swiped a Christmas ornament, a fabric elf with bells on its hat, and hid it under the covers of my bed in the room Suzy and I shared. We were going to sleep on Christmas Eve, lights off, when I covertly (terrible pun, sorry) jingled the bells and said it was Santa’s sleigh overhead. The scratching was my fingers on the wall, not the pawing hooves of reindeer. Ingenuous as I had been, Suzy bought it.

Like my mom, I turned to the practical business of promoting a myth after it was busted. It’s a matter of seasoned candles lighting new candles; past believing, but refusing to concede that magic can’t exist in the world, while appreciating cookies.