Santa sucks.
It recently occurred to me that everyone eventually arrives at that same conclusion one way or the other.
I certainly did on Saturday, at precisely 12:36pm. Earlier that morning my wife and I packed up our two boys (one nearly 4 and the other 11 months) and headed off to our local shopping centre.
After literally stalking an elderly couple through the car park to get a spot, we went inside and promptly headed for the “Winter Wonderland”, eager to quickly let the boys tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas, get a couple of nice photos, do a spot of shopping ourselves, and be on our merry little way.
We patiently got into line, queuing amidst the elaborate Christmas display - the usual bunch of pretty lights scattered out amongst a loose posse of unconvincing, animatronic arctic creatures – and slowly waited for our turn to come.
When we finally got to the front of the line, we were greeted (nay, blankly glanced at) by the most unfriendly Santa ever to don an ill-fitting red suit. He ordered my wife to get out of the way of the photo, and barely said a word or cracked a smile in the two minutes we had the misfortune of being in smelling distance of him.
Two photo prints later and the cost of this little adventure had come to 25 dollars. It could have well exceeded that amount had we opted for anything other than the most basic photo package.
I admit to being a stingy bugger at the best of times (proudly taking after my dad in that respect), but… what the?!
The whole experience was enough for me to ask myself, why the hell do we even bother with any of it?
Even leaving aside the dreadful suburban shopping centre pilgrimage that parents willingly subject themselves and their kids to every year, why do we still persist with the entire Santa myth at all?
When you think about it for long enough in the abstract, it seems like a really terrible idea.
Christmas itself is a date that is supposed to celebrate the birth of Jesus (albeit on the northern hemisphere’s Winter solstice – a significant date ‘borrowed’ from the pagans), but has become a largely non-denominational holiday anyway.
So, if we can get through Christmas entirely forgetting why it exists in the first place, why can’t we also do without some lame story about a fat home intruder who takes all the credit for mum and dad’s hard gift-buying work?
It’s not like Christmas ceases to exist once you find out Santa isn’t real. If anything, you end up being more appreciative of your gifts, knowing that someone you know has worked hard for it, rather than the alternative, which is that a stranger forced one of his elf slaves to knock it together on his behalf.
It’s a sort of big, strange global lie that seems completely antithetical to good parenting. And there’s a very real risk that the whole façade can collapse in a rather dangerous manner.
Luckily for most kids finding out that Santa isn’t real is a bit of a non-event, usually a result of older siblings’ often deliberately loose tongues. But for some kids it can be totally devastating.
A friend of mine never thought that Santa was real, even from a very young age, because her mother only ever said that Santa was a “nice story”, not an actual person. Why? Because she was mentally scarred as a child the day that she found out that Santa wasn’t real, and never wanted her kids to go through that themselves. It’s a rather sensible parental response, when you think about it.
Likewise, another friend last year had an awful time quelling his daughter’s deep despair when she discovered from her school friends that Santa is just a work of collective fiction. She was distraught, and understandably so, because she discovered that she had been lied to for years and years, by the very people she should trust the most.
So much for the “Magic of Christmas”: the line that usually gets trotted out anytime someone questions the strange stuff that people do at this time of year.
So, ask yourself. Why can’t we just give gifts to one another and leave the lying to one side?
Why don’t we just tell kids the truth: that your mum and dad (or mum and mum, or dad and dad) love you, and at Christmas time we buy thoughtful presents for, and spend time with, the people we love?
On second thought, it’s probably just easier to shell out 25 bucks every year.
Like I said, Santa sucks.
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