by Rachel Chacon Editor-in-Chief
Believing in all things Santa was something else, wasn't it? He had a hold over you; he had your number. As children, we tried to be our best because the Big Man Up North knew who was naughty and who was nice...and he made sure you got yours and they got theirs. Except he's not the only Big Guy who watches over us, is he?
Watching an old black and white holiday cartoon the other night elicited thoughts about how we seem to trade Santa for Jesus as we 'grow up'-a blankie for a book, if you will. Unfortunately, there comes a time when you're too big to still think a magical man drops presents down a chimney for all the little kiddies of the world. It's a time of extreme (if unconscious) sadness for all of us, don't try and hide it. However, this ending is the start of a new beginning; one where a different and much more acceptable magic man drops miracles from the sky for everyone too-if only they believe. He goes by the name of Jesus, and he's got a bit more clout than Santa ever will. But is it rightly so? If you think about it, the concept is the same: be good and you will be rewarded. But one magic man is looked at as silly and the other as spiritual. I wonder how that can be, when both are a leap of blind faith...
It's interesting to watch the way a child will emphatically say that Santa is real and is coming soon (while adults nod and smile politely). In the next moment, that same adult raises their hands to the sky to praise a Santa of their own, feeling justified and oh, why not--sanctified in doing so! We placate children by telling them that Santa is real and they should do their damndest to make him happy, all the while thinking its pile of shit. Well, what do we do to ourselves? Don't promises of the afterlife and eternal glory have the same power as the naughty list? I don't know. Maybe that's a pile of shit, too.
Who knows anything for sure, anyway. If Santa is what childhood is about: believing in something you would never see, then Jesus may be what adulthood is about: believing in something you don't have to see.
The magic men of the far and farther north have a hold over us yet.
