Talking About Santa, or Ways My Kids Messed Up Parenting

When my oldest kiddo was five, he started a line of questioning just before the holidays that Jason and I knew wouldn’t end well.

Exhibit A: Jack’s Cross Examination about Santa Claus

Jack: Daddy, how does Santa’s sleigh fly?

Jason: The reindeer pull it. They can fly.

Jack: But how does the sleigh stay up?

Jason: ??

Jack: Cuz it’s only attached by rope thingies. The sleigh would just dangle down behind the reindeer, and everything would fall out.

Jason: ummmm….

Where do you go with this? Do you start talking physics based on your loose adult grasp of momentum and centripetal force or whatever? Do you just dig your heels into “everything’s magic?”

It didn’t matter. Either way, Jack wasn’t buying it. Several days later, he cornered me in the bathroom and, manipulating his knowledge that I would never flat-out lie to him, asked me point blank, “Mommy, is Santa Claus real?”

I did my best deflection gymnastics. I asked, “Well, what do you think?” (It always worked on the preschoolers I taught.) But he was relentless, which by this point in his life, we knew was one of his primary defining traits. Finally, I fiercely whispered through clenched teeth…

“Okay, you fuckin’ got me! No, Santa isn’t real. Do NOT tell your little brother and ruin the magic for him.”

(I didn’t actually say “fucking” to my five-year-old; it was implied.)

Jason and I were traumatized by this end to fantasy and innocence for our firstborn; Jack was not. He sauntered away from me with his newfound knowledge, a confident smirk on his face. He has always been much more comfortable with the idea of a concrete, non-magical universe. Knowing that an old guy dressed in fuzzy red pajamas wasn’t really going to tumble through the air in a gravity-defying sleigh — that no way has the volumetric capacity to carry presents for all the world’s kids — and commit a little B & E, worming his way down the chimney into our house in the middle of the night while we all slept was 100-percent a relief to that kid.

Enter Gage.

This kid never asked me if Santa was real. Whether Santa was or was not an actual person or just a concept vehicle for creative holiday activities seemed irrelevant to him. It was fun to talk of magical things, and so he did — leaving cookies and milk for Santa and eagerly awaiting the note the big guy would leave — well into late elementary school. He has always been comfortable with a hazy line between magical and realism. He didn’t actually care if Santa was real or not… or maybe he always knew he was a figment.

Sidenote: Embarrassingly, I just had to look up “magical realism.” These are the moments I feel more like a hack than an expert author.

Exhibit B: Conversation with Gage and his stuffed dinosaur, Nono.

Gage, all nestled in his covers at bedtime: Nono covers me up in my bed at night when I’m cold.

Me: Really? What a helpful little animal he is. Does he run around your room and play while you’re at school?

Gage: Yeah… Mommy, you know he’s not real, right?

I appreciate his concern for my mental stability. To this day, Gage loves nothing better than the nonsensical. Random non-sequiturs like “Yes, I would love to ride a cow!” in response to “What do you want for dinner?” are his bread and butter, much to the exasperation of his older brother.

More ways my kids threw my child development degree out the window.

Exhibit C: Nocturnal Dinosaur Antics

Years ago, inspired by an internet trend, I started setting up the kids’ plastic dinosaurs after they’d gone to bed. In the morning, Jack and Gage would discover such tableaus as “Dinos Learn to Read” (dinosaurs playing with and eating the ABC fridge magnets) or “Dinos Want a Snack” (making a mess of the box of Cheerios). “Dinos Learn to Play Pool” was a favorite of mine.

Gage giggled and found the dinosaurs’ penchant for chaos and mess delightful. His older brother required confirmation from me that the plastic dinosaurs were not actually moving of their own accord during the night. Once his magic anxiety was assuaged, Jack relaxed and became thoroughly disinterested in my dinosaur tricks.

Support dinosaur literacy; teach a dino to read. (Because they obviously don’t know what they’re doing.)

These are two profoundly different approaches to life.

There is the commitment to what can be observed and proven real with our human senses and instruments or the tendency to revel in the mysterious and magical. As a little kid, Jack loved construction equipment and its mechanical certainty. He could name them all — backhoe, front-loader, bulldozer — and was quick to correct if you got it wrong. Gage loved dragons and the idea that three-ton reptiles could fly and exhibit not just sentient-ness but magical powers. The wilder and sillier the story, the better. One of his favorites was one I made up about a magical dragon who regularly visited the park down the street from our house and pooped brightly colored sparkly gemstones.

It’s interesting. They seemed to have each been born this way. Maybe there’s a continuum that we all fall along; perhaps this changes from day to day and from year to year throughout our lives. I find value in both. As much as I love science and hard data, what I really revel in is the edge of that knowledge — where I can imagine what comes after quantum physics or what’s really out there beyond the observable universe. After all…

Magic’s just science we don’t understand yet.

~ Arthur C. Clarke

Does the magical make you excited or uncomfortable? Do you find solace in what is solid and observable, or do you find it dull? Or, like most things, is it some more complicated interplay, depending on circumstance, mood, the time of year… What do YOU think?