Circus the Grinch on Santa Claus

This entry was originally posted on 1 December 2004 at 12:19 p.m.

Circus the Grinch back again for yet another installment of holiday moaning. On today's program we'll be talking about the one, the only, the mysterious Santa Claus. Second in a short series.

Ho ho ho. Or something like that. I heard a very funny quote this morning that i'd like to share with you before we get into today's topic. It was from Billie Mae Richards, the now-83-year old woman who was the voice of Rudoph in the old stop-motion movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: "Rudolph was a nice Canadian boy." She added that he wasn't the mischief maker everyone thinks he was. B and i got a good hearty chuckle out of this one. It really was sweet.

Anyway, this brings me around to today's topic: Santa Claus. Because Santa wouldn't be Santa without his reindeer, right? (Let's not get into the debate over whether the reindeer were male or female. I'll let Snopes settle this one.)

Regardless of whether you're a religious or secular observer of the holiday, you can't get away from Santa Claus, either in his red-suited form or in his saintly form (though Saint Nick's feast day actually falls on December 6, not December 25, but we can overlook this along with the millions of American shoppers who do it every year). But there's always this question of belief.

Now, Saint Nicholas undoubtedly lived. And he undoubtedly died (according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, his body was in fact stolen from its resting place in Myra in 1087 and taken to Bari, where it still resides). Given the historical (and physical) record of Saint Nick, it's hard not to believe in him. But Santa Claus, on the other hand, is this weird little mythical fellow around whom the word "belief" takes on a slightly different meaning.

For the record, i have no opinion on whether or not the red-suited Santa "really exists." It doesn't really matter to me enough to either believe or disbelieve. And given that this is coming from an adult, i'm sure many of you are shaking your heads. Well, stop. Because really, think about it. Sure, you've never really gotten a present from Santa, but you're working on the assumption that existence requires only physical presence. But ideas exist, and they're not physical, so go back and rethink your assumption and come back and read the rest of this rant once your mind has begun to click like a bad hard drive.

Ahem.

Now. Yesterday i heard a kid of maybe eight or nine years say, word for word, this sentence: "I actually still believe in Santa Claus."

I wanted to cry. Because really, the kid didn't. And i'll tell you how i know. She said the words "still" and "actually." The tone of her statement was such that it sounded like she was expecting not to believe in Santa for much longer. The combination of these facts tells me that, really, she doesn't actually believe. She merely wants to believe.

I've met many people who don't want their kids to believe in Santa. And truthfully, this makes me a little sad. While i see all their arguments (it's a letdown, he's not real--at least physically, right?--etc.), i find these arguments lacking in compassion. Face it: Santa Claus, as much as he's become a bargaining tool for parents attempting to correct the unruly behavior of their children, is a bastion of hope. He's a beacon of goodness. He's a symbol of the kindness and fairness that is inherently lacking in the adult world.

And who am i (and who is anyone else) to deny a kid that kind of hope, that kind of innocence? Maybe if a smidgeon of that old belief in Santa stuck around through our lives, the world would be a little different.

Of course, Circus the Grinch has no love for the soulless and commercially-driven toy frenzy that occurs annually around December 25. But that's not what Santa's really about, is he?