I Still Believe in Santa Claus

Whew. Glad to get that off my chest. *closes closet door*

You may be thinking, "you mean, metaphorically or symbolically, right?"

You'd be wrong.

I'm talking about the whole fat guy in a red suit with flying reindeer bit. I believe he does manage to get around the world in one night, and can squeeze his massive bottom into any chimney just to give children gifts.

Yeah, that guy....

So, the typical reaction is what in fuck's name do you think you're doing believing in Santa Claus at age 26?

It's not easy to explain. It's not that I got mysterious gifts every Christmas. Sometimes, all I got was a lousy shirt. (Naughty year, I suppose.)

Since there is no easy explanation, let me try by answering the objections instead. What exactly is so objectionable about the reality of Santa Claus?

The most common objection is the one given to kids above the age of 7: it is rationally, logically impossible for reindeer to fly, for a fat old man to fit into chimneys, and for such a man to go around the world in 12 hours.

I would  say that if I'm supposed to believe that a race of primitive, poo-flinging chimps would someday compose Handel's Messiah, why not a jolly old man with more contortionist skills than a houseful of yogi who travels at trans-light speed with aerodynamic reindeer?

Not everything on Heaven or Earth will be found in your philosophy, Horatio, even if you do call it "science" and obtain government legitimization and funding.

The next objection would be that Santa is just a symbol, a myth, a projection of our desires. That cannot be real.

I would say that a symbol may be the most real thing one will ever see. For isn't the symbol of justice far more real than the actuality of court proceedings and paper signings? As for the myth, who is to say that myths aren't real? I fall squarely on the side of Tolkien, who believed that man can become legend, and the legend become myth. This does not make the man any less real, it only makes the myth more true. If that divine imprint in me that seeks out the Ultimate Myth has any say on the matter, it is that the falsehoods of smaller myths cannot stand against the greater truths they convey towards my longing to understand the Greatest of all Myths. If that Bishop of Smyrna became legend, then became myth, it does not eradicate the reality of the Bishop of Smyrna. That he may still exist to this age is as real to me as such immaterial things as dreams and hopes are real.

As for desire projection, how can desire render the real unreal? Does our projection of our own understandings and desires on the natural world make the natural world a fiction?

CS Lewis, in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, wrote that the White Witch's most potent curse is to make it "always winter, but never Christmas". The first inkling of hope that the curse was fading was the reappearance of Father Christmas (Santa!), who says that "she has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last."

If the forever winter can never be real to me, how in the world can Santa not be?

The final objection would be that only someone insane can believe that Santa is real past a certain age.

I would reply by saying that maybe it is true. Maybe I am insane.

But what is "insane" really?

G.K. Chesterton once said that believing in the impossible may be the most sane thing of all. He says in Orthodoxy that, "mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination." From his line of reasoning, the only alternatives to believing in the impossible are a reductionist materialistic worldview that gathers knowledge only on things not worth knowing in the deepest sense (I am moved to delve intimately into the eternal wisdom of particle collision...nah...) or the madness of trying to fit the infinite into a woefully finite mind. Logic and rationality can only grip so much. You must either accept the mystery of ages, from the God who became Man to even the Bishop who strides the world in one night, or face the emptiness of a material world or the madness of shrinking what can never be shrunk. You tell me which is now "insane".

Let me close my response to this objection with Don Quixote's words from the musical The Man of La Mancha:

              I've been a soldier and a slave.
              I've seen my comrades fall in battle...
              or die more slowly under the lash in Africa.
              I've held them at the last moment.
              These were men who saw life as it is.
              Yet they died despairing.
              No glory, no brave last words.
              Only their eyes, filled with confusion...
              questioning why.
              I do not think they were asking why they were dying...
              but why they had ever lived.
              When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?
              Perhaps to be too practical is madness.
              To surrender dreams, this may be madness.
              To seek treasure where there is only trash...
              too much sanity may be madness!
              And maddest of all...
              to see life as it is and not as it should be!

So, feel free to have at our cookies and fruitcake, St. Nick, and to the rest of you a Merry Christmas.