Was at school this week in the staff room and the discussion
was centred on the preparations for Christmas.
Buying presents, decorating trees, Christmas parties, performances
etc. I mentioned that we did not and
have never bought Christmas presents or trees for our children. There was a horrified silence as if I had
regaled them with tales of how I starved my children regularly. My story had slipped out when I told them of
shopping at a supermarket with my youngest, a mere toddler, in the trolley seat
with groceries pilled up behind him. As
the shop assistant scanned the items she smiled brightly at my son and asked
that usual pre Christmas question.
“And what is Santa bringing you?”
in a happy confidant tone designed to lift customers spirits with festive joy.
Daniel answered instantly
“He
doesn’t give me anything and never has!”
A horrified uncomfortable silence reigned as she scanned in
the remaining items. The look she gave
me was one of shocked surprise that said clearly she wondered what kind of
parent was I.
My children were told from an early age that Santa was not
real. That other parents pretended he
existed for lovely reasons. To make
their children excited about the Christmas period, to celebrate the birth of
Christ, to create a spirit of giving and kindness in families and
communities. We kept stressing that it
was a religious festival designed to remind people of the life of Christ and
his teachings. But they missed the
whole presents and Santa thing. The
only present they got was one from my parents and boy did that one present mean
a lot!
It was a little hard at times when they saw the abundance of
gifts showered upon their cousins and neighbours. But they were surprisingly stoical about it. Children accept you for what you are, warts
and all. They see you as normal and
judge the rest of the world from that baseline. That’s why it is so horrible
when we really screw them up. When we
make our nightmare their baseline.
Thankfully our three children, now adults, seem to hold no grudges for all
those missing gifts and non-existent Santas.
Which kind of shows how meaningless most of that crap really is. Indeed, we were careful to tell them, even
when toddlers, that on no account should they ruin the illusion of Santa for
their friends and school mates. That it would be cruel to steal this illusion
when their parents had so carefully cultivated the magic of it year after
year. So when Daniel aged three
answered the shop assistant with
“He doesn’t
give me anything and never has!”
I was quite proud that he was careful not to shatter her
conviction that Santa was real. He knew
not to announce that,
“Santa does not exist and
therefore does not bring me anything.”
