Monday, December 6, 2010

Yes Lola, there is a "Santa."

I knew sooner or later the question would surface. She is five and profoundly curious, I just was not ready for it... "Mom, some of the kids are saying there's no Santa. He's made up like the Tooth Fairy and parents buy the gifts." She wasn't looking at me as she wondered, she continued her scribbles at the dining room table.

Oh crap! Think fast! It is a dilemma. Are we dishonest to tell our children these myths? Are we harming them, creating false hopes? We know the time is so fleeting, they are so little for only so long. The days of footie pajamas and story times and selfless snuggling will end, replaced by self consciousness and peer pressures and children who are growing up.

"Well, what do you think?" I thought it best to ask her, before I added my two cents, hoping for a bit more time to think. "I'd like to think he's real" she said. "Me too, he's real like the feeling you get when it snows for the first time, real the way cookies smell baking, real in the way you hug someone and it makes them happy and it makes you feel happy."

I'm glad she's made her own choice to believe a little while longer. I still believe, don't you?