Santa Claus: The Gift to Us All

As I remember it some years ago, Christmas was only a bit more than a week out on the night my burning question finally blazed hot enough, forcing me to face it. It was around 11:00 pm that I realized that sleep would evade me until I had a very serious conversation about my belief in Santa. 

Earlier that day, we were at a Christmas party and an older friend turned to me and asked “Do you believe in Santa?” At that point, I already had doubts. Even today I vividly remember overhearing an upperclassman on my elementary school bus tell her friend about how her younger sister caught her and her parents in “the act” one Christmas a few years back. I was no older than six. Miraculously, I dismissed it as a joke or made-up story, possibly because the idea of a big jolly fat man coming blessing my house with presents once a year utterly enthralled me. I had seen and heard other stories that I probably should have taken clear signals from concerning the truth about Santa. They did shake my belief, but they never fully deconstructed it.

Yet years later, when my friend asked me upfront about my faith in Santa, I stammered, only managing a weak “I don’t know, maybe,” in place of a real answer. I suppose my older friend decided that I was old enough to know the truth, responding “Well you shouldn’t. It’s fake.”

Fake.

That’s how I found out for sure that Santa Claus was not real. That night, as I lay in my bed with my tearful eyes focused on a random imperfection on the ceiling that I still lay under today, I questioned the entirety of my short life. I felt as if it was all a lie. If Santa is nothing but a figment of mine and my parents’ imaginations, then what else is? The Easter Bunny? The Tooth Fairy? Probably. All of it must be nothing but a cruel deception my parents set up to play with my impressionable mind. I didn’t want to confront it, but I was tired. Sleep called my name, and at this point, my dreams seemed like the only source of magic left, so they seemed rather enticing that December night. 

“I must confront the truth. I must clear things up.” I thought. And so, through watery eyes, I rose from bed and knocked on the door of my parents’ bedroom. 

My father answered the door.

“Why did you lie?” I desperately asked my father, whose eyes and body were heavy with the exhaustion all parents seem to come down with during the Christmas season.

We had a long conversation and I barely accepted the fact that it was my parents that ate the cookies on our hand-painted plate featuring a picture of a tall lanky snowman sitting in a snowy winter wonderland, and not a big jolly fat man. My father assured me that the magic wasn’t truly gone, and that I could still experience it vicariously through the wonder of my younger sister’s eyes along with the eyes of any family members that may come along in the future. It was enough clarification I needed to  fall asleep that night, but part of me still wondered what the point of Santa even was. 

That Christmas, as I saw my sister thank Santa for all the gifts she received and never deserved, I smiled along, yet with a heavy heart. 

At 17, I consider myself to be in the awkward “in-between” phase of life. Not in the sense that I am middle aged (far from it—thanks be to God), but in the sense that I am neither a child nor do I have any of my own yet. I am no longer a direct recipient of Santa’s magic, but not yet the direct source of it either. Other than asking my younger cousins what they want from Santa this year, or where in their house the Elf on the Shelf hid, it is not my responsibility—or blessing—to give the gift of Santa to young believers. 

For a while, the in-between was a difficult place for me. Every year, I still mourn the loss of the special night’s sleep I always got on Christmas Eve, knowing that a loving man I have never even seen is blessing me with gifts I didn’t even deserve. But it was only until recently that I came to understand what Santa truly means, and today, I view Santa as a much more important and true figure than I ever had when I actually believed in the big jolly fat man himself. 

Although I have long been aware that the name Santa itself came from the Dutch translation of the word “saint,” it is abundantly clear to me now that the legend of Santa Claus is a direct (and intentional) allusion to God for children. 

A few days ago, I found myself pursuing the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas’ in the Shorter Summa, his “own concise version of his Summa Theologica,” as the Sophia Institute Press describes it. Being the most theologically dense work I have ever read, (aside from the Bible itself) I am still both baffled and enlightened by the saint’s words. 

A few days ago, it was the topic of grace that caught my attention and spurred my imagination. In Chapter 214 of Part 1, Aquinas posits that “a thing is given gratis to another because he to whom it is given is pleasing (gratus) to the giver, either simply or in some respect.” In this situation, Aquinas splits up the meaning of grace into two definitions: the first: “a thing is said to be given gratis if it is in no way due;” and the second, gratus, refers to the idea that “someone is in the good graces of another because he is pleasing to him.” 

I did not grow up in a rigorously Christian household. However, through the magic of Santa, I learned an overtly Christian principle: charity brings rewards. The simple act of being good may not always be seen by another person around me, but it will undoubtedly be seen by the one who matters most, and even though the gift may be delayed, it will always come. Santa taught me not to worry if no one saw me pick up a fallen pile of paper in an empty classroom in May. Santa Claus was watching and preparing to give me a gift I always felt I never deserved for the act I did 7 months prior. Even at a young age, none of the transient mattered to me because I felt vindicated on Christmas morning when I saw the fruits of being gratus in the eyes of Santa Claus, even if I lacked the proper terminology for the sensation at that age. 

This idea became important to me. I did not want to disappoint Santa, and if I felt the temptation to do something bad, I imagined the big jolly fat man’s face as he watched me defy his best wishes from the desk of his North Pole office. 

St. Aquinas continues on with the relation of this concept to God’s greatest gift: His only Son. God already grants us the ordinary gifts of life, whether we deserve it or not, but Christ’s grace lies in His salvation of those who please Him. 

“By receiving this gratuitous gift, therefore, man is made pleasing to God and is brought so far that by the love of charity he becomes one with God: he is in God and God is in him.” 

St. Aquinas explicitly makes the case that affection brought about by charity is the first way in which we build on our “twofold” union with our creator. In other words, we become better people by being good for goodness’ sake. 

The in-between is a tricky place to be in. I want to be part of the action, either by staying up late on Christmas Eve, wrapping and placing my children’s presents under the Christmas tree, or by waking up early and tearing back the paper of the gifts the elves wrapped for me. It is the simple truth that I am not, and that I must wait a few more years before I am pulled into the center of it all once again. 

 I have heard parents describe the feeling of near guilt they are overcome with when they realize they don’t deserve the kind of joy they get from seeing their children squeal with happiness for the gifts Santa brought them. I graciously await what will come to me once I exit the in-between. 

It is the Advent season: a time of hope, faith, joy and peace, so I write today to inform you of the new beauty I have found in this chapter of my life. As I move through the season, and Christmas rapidly approaches, I am whimsied by the faint whispers of my past and quiet calls from my future. I have found the in-between to be a period of deep reflection and a time of great choice. Who has Santa made me become? Who will Santa lead me to be? The in-between is as necessary and as legitimate for older kids and young adults as Santa is for little children.

In our brokenness, humans have found a way to corrupt nearly every gift God has given us, including Santa. In the utilitarian culture we have created, the pessimistic have found capitalist critiques of Santa Claus, but this is not the worldview I gained from my childhood with Santa. 

My father, with eyes and a body heavy with that Christmastime exhaustion all parents seem to come down with this time of year, sat me down on my bed and answered my burning question. “I didn’t lie. Santa is real. He’s just not the big jolly fat man you imagined he was. I am Santa. All the millions of parents out there who radiate with joy on Christmas morning when they see their children tear open their gifts with grins creeping up their faces are Santa. And one day, you will be Santa too.” Although I didn’t—or maybe more accurately, couldn’t—accept it at that moment, I have come to do so over the years. 

Something I don’t particularly remember being told in that late-night talk about the truth of Santa is how seminal an experience it was in my development as a young woman of faith—possibly because it was a lesson I had to find out for myself more than one that I could have been lectured about. It was Santa that introduced me to the values of prudence, providence, and posterity I hold in such esteem today. It is Santa that led me to the revelation I am sharing with you now. Above all the presents any child has received for Christmas, Santa is the most important gift a parent can give to a child. Santa himself is a gratis gift to us all, no matter what stage we find ourselves in.