In fond memory of Christmas archnemesis Tom Flynn
Once again, we arrive at that most wonderful time of the year. I refer to Christmastime, the season—in the United States, anyway—of decked-out pine trees, gag-reflex-inducing TV specials, and fresh, righteous, Starbucks cup–sparked outrage. And, not to be overlooked, your local paper will likely reprint the 1897 New York Sun piece in which its aptly surnamed author, Francis Pharcellus Church, assured eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon of the reality of Santa Claus.
“Not believe in Santa Claus?” the evidently aghast Church blustered. “You might as well not believe in fairies! … Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there.” I concede the point. Unseen fairies could be Gangnam Styling it up inside Bertrand Russell’s teapot even as I write.
Still, I have questions. Chief among them is why Church’s parents gave him a middle name that sounds like something scary growing in a Petri dish.
Would that I had stumbled upon Church’s article when I was a young parent. As it was, this heartless, incompetent dad actually leveled about Santa with his kids from the time they were small. In so doing, according to Church, I condemned them to a life of “no enjoyment, except in sense and sight.” I’m a little unclear as to what happened to smell, taste, hearing, and touch.
Worse, I extinguished in them the “eternal light with which childhood fills the world.” This, too, I concede. Not once in the thousands of times I kissed my kids goodnight and switched off the light did they emit so much as a single lumen of world-filling eternal light. It’s a wonder they grew up to become functioning adults.
At the same time, I condemned myself to a life of reprisals from other parents. Though I had warned my kids not to set their friends straight on the whole Santa thing, the admonition was no match for the allure of “We know something you don’t know.” In no time, I was a pariah, the neighborhood Christmas saboteur. I am chagrined to admit that I had not thought through the moral consequences of not lying to my kids.
Lucky thing the Sun assigned someone like Church and not someone like me to answer Virginia’s question. Someone like me would have ruined everything by, you know, telling the truth. “Actually, Virginia,” I might have written, “Santa exists not in reality but in our imaginations.”
Depending on my mood, I might also have tossed in some gratuitous remark about how the Santa thing celebrates giving. Except, no, it doesn’t. It celebrates obligatory giving. It promotes feeling like a heel when you don’t have a gift for someone who gives you one, often followed by rushing to the mall and picking up something, anything, to give in return, whether you can afford it or not and pretending you’d had it hidden away all along. Whoever came up with the expression “exchanging gifts” deserves an award for foisting an enduring misnomer on society. Exchanging isn’t giving. It’s trading.
Yet I am willing to give credit where it is due by admitting that Christmas shopping provides an economic boon, tending, as it does, to kick retailers into the black just before yearend. For their part, retailers deserve credit for exercising remarkable restraint by holding off on Christmas promotions until well into the second half of July.
“A thousand years from now, Virginia,” summed up Church, “nay 10 times 10 thousand years from now, [Santa] will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
Perhaps. But then, the thought of some dude sneaking into your house when you’re asleep could as easily leave the heart of childhood utterly creeped out.