Topic: Christmas
So did you find Santa somewhere yesterday?
I remember well when I first discovered that this jolly soul was really a figment of my imagination, created skillfully by the adults who needed for me to believe. Perhaps even to make up for their own lack of magical sense from their days of growing up in the Great Depression.
Guess it was window into my personality, showing that I expect people to speak the truth literally. Even when it came to the "white lies"--whether dressed in red, along with the white, or not.
I was just furious when I found out my parents had lied to me. I confronted them with a vengeance. At age six! I told them I would never believe another thing they said. Oh, how I ranted and raved!
"You tell me that it's a sin to lie!" I said, with as much fury as I have often felt because of much more serious lies that the institutional church has told to cover up evil.
They tried to tell me that it was all so I could just have fun. It was all just play, they insisted.
I didn't see it that way. Truth is that it probably WAS years before I forgave them. I didn't care if parents everywhere in the country told their kids the same myth. They should tell their kids that it wasn't true, I insisted. They were all at fault!
As an adult, I go along with what other people teach their kids about Santa. I don't think it's a moral issue to talk about this mythical man as if he was real. I just never had the heart to do it with my own children. I was way too traumatized.
One set of my grandchildren believe in Santa still. The other does not. It will be funny (I hope) when someday those two approaches collide so that the truth is revealed. At least, interesting.
Sometimes, it seems to me, that much of what we teach our children about God is closely aligned to the Santa myth, too. Maybe because we as adults "need' to believe even more than the kids.
