KITCHENER POST
The magic of Christmas
By Karen Kawawada

Thursday, December, 01, 2011 - 1:01:36 PM

“Trick or treat! It’s almost Christmas!” So said my two-year-old the other day.

OK, so she’s a little confused about which holiday is which. But she is getting an idea of what goes on at various times of year, which brings me to the thorny question: what am I going to tell her about Santa?

Last year, it didn’t matter. At 15 to 16 months, she was too young to understand Christmas, so I didn’t think too hard about the issue when I took her to visit Santa at Conestoga Mall.

I just thought it would be cute. Now I can forever treasure the picture of her howling in abject terror.

My parents didn’t tell me about Santa when I was growing up. So I never had any illusions that some fat old guy was going to stuff himself down the chimney at precisely midnight.

I was the kid who told all the other kids at kindergarten that there was no Santa. Some of them cried. I didn’t care. Really, I wanted revenge for the fact they all seemed to get more presents than I did, because their parents had to keep up the pretense of flying reindeer.

My husband didn’t have the most typical childhood Christmas experience either. Both our families are full of atheists, agnostics, and just plain can’t-be-bothered-to-go-to-church types. So the only Christ in our Christmases was when someone took the name in vain.

At my husband’s father’s house, they didn’t even bother with a Christmas tree.

They had a Christmas chair.

Yep. One year, one of the boys bugged Dad about getting a Christmas tree, and my now-father-in-law got out a chair. As he says, “It was wood, wasn’t it?”

However, when it came to Santa, my husband was a true believer. He even pretended to believe after he’d stopped believing, so he’d continue to get presents from Santa.

He wants our daughter to have the same experience. I presume he means the magic-of-Christmas part, not the manipulation-of-parents part.

I’m of two minds about it. On one hand, I get that the Santa tradition is important to his family, especially his mother, whom I love dearly, but who really needs an extra outlet for her present-buying fixation.

On the other hand, I’m not into lying to my daughter. She’s a stickler for accuracy. She already corrects me if I get a word wrong when reading her stories and she holds me to every promise, especially of the “you can have a cookie when we get home” sort.

I remember all sorts of loopholes other kids created to keep believing in Santa. Too fat to fit down the chimney? No problem, he lost weight beforehand. Too many houses to visit at once? No problem, he could travel faster than light. Saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus? Hey, it’s not adultery if it’s an elf.

Too much doublethink for me.

My husband says when our daughter starts asking tough questions, we should just ask her: “Well, what do you think?” A good exercise in reasoning, he says. Which I have to admit makes sense.

So, with some reluctance, I’ve caved. I’ll let Daddy tell our daughter about Santa. She’ll probably even get presents from Santa. After all, I never used the word “miracle” until she was born. Maybe she’ll show me there can be magic to Christmas after all.