Why Grown-Ups Need Santa Claus
by Joan Gould
When I was small, I was brought up in the Germanic tradition that Santa Claus puts lovely presents under the tree for good girls and boys, but only coal and sticks for those who've been bad. Even on December 25th I had to eat breakfast before doing anything else; as I walked into the kitchen, I could see only a corner of the living room, so swathed in shadows that I could not be sure if gifts or lumps of coal were waiting for me there. Mind you, it was not the loss of presents that I dreaded. It was the disgrace of having everyone witness my shame. Somehow, even then, I felt that Santa Claus must be wiser than we are and must know enough to give us something far better than we deserve, or else he was of no more use to us than our parents.
I have not changed my view. Whenever I hear a mother say to her child, "Be good, or Santa won't bring you anything," I want to banish her forever to a land where it is always winter and never Christmas, as C.S. Lewis says--where mounds of tinsel are sprinkled on her shag rugs every day, and all the children have grown up and left home and gone to live with their in-laws. Obviously, that mother does not believe in Santa.
Often, in the past, I have been attacked for inviting Santa into my house--with a Christmas tree in the corner to greet him--because I am a Jew. Never mind, I insist. The tree and myth may have nothing to do with my religion, but they have nothing to do with anyone else's, either. That garlanded tree is much more primitive than any religion we can name, while the Santa tradition as we know it is much younger. Now that he has shed the name of old Saint Nicholas, we can see him more clearly as a figure spawned by the Industrial Revolution and its consumers, who need him more urgently with every passing year. We need him so desperately that we had to invent him.
But what a worry that jolly old elf is! Jews worry because he is not Jewish, and Christians worry because he is not religious at all. When I was little, psychologists worried that children would feel deceived when they discovered that no whiskery old gentleman had been clambering in and out of their chimney, although no child I ever met was that silly for a moment. Today, it is fashionable to worry about the opposite, that all the poetry has vanished from the holiday, along with the penwiper dolls we used to make out of yearn for Mother. Is Santa only one more peddler of high-priced baby dolls that suffer from diaper rash?
Listening to these anxieties, I realize once again what an astonishing and downright terrifying idea Christmas is--our secular Christmas, I mean: a day when all of us but the littlest are called upon to give with love and gladness and an open hand. But give what? Choices rise up in front of us and tempt us and flicker and multiply and repel us and hold our attention against our will, like late-night movies on television. There is no way to turn them off, and only one way to enjoy them: by believing in Santa Claus. That is, we grown-ups must believe in him. My children might manage without him; I know that I could not.
I discovered Santa for myself one Christmas Eve when my children were little and so was my budget. Half an hour before the stores closed, I could not stop myself from rushing downtown, in the rain and the feverish crowds, to buy one more toy that was burning a hole in my imagination: a huge plastic horse on springs. I thought I needed a single, mind-boggling gift that would transport not only my children but my husband and me out of our everyday world.
I was wrong. My children did not need a plastic horse. What they needed was a parent who could give without feeling guilty that the gifts were not enough--even if there was a whole stable full of horses on springs--or guilty because they had cost too much money, or guilty because Tommy got the horse, and what did Alice get to match it? They needed parents who did not think that gifts were a measure of love. They needed parents who did not measure their children's behavior, either, in terms of "be good, or Santa won't bring you anything."
I am not that parent--but Santa Claus is. Never is he pushed by guilt or pulled by television commercials or pinched by anxiety over money. He listens to requests but need not fill them, any more than snow has to fall when my child asks it to fall.
Dear children, now that you are older, I will tell you a secret. No matter what anyone says, Santa Claus is not your parents. He is the parent we wish we were, riding high and free above your heads, pulled by enchanted reindeer, and bringing you gifts that could never be less than perfect.
I believe in Santa, oh, yes, I believe.