Fortunately It’s Not About Believing in Santa

There comes a time when every child who has believed in Santa, becomes mired in a netherworld of unbelief. Were that not true, we would never have been blessed with the world’s most famous newspaper editorial of all times authored by Francis Pharcellus Church on Sept. 21, 1897, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” It was a response to an inquiry from little 8-year-old Virginia Hanlon asking if there was, in fact, a gentleman known as Santa Claus.
As dawn comes, and it is not realized until the slightest brightening breaks the inky black, so the day arrives when, spoken or not, one’s mind changes, perhaps not for the better. Then realization evolves, sometimes brought about by an older sibling, friend or schoolmate. How is that question handled with tact? How is the question answered in each awakening mind? Is there a Santa?
Reality knocks at the door earlier for some than others. The gut-wrenching truth might have arrived for you by economic necessity, when a parent’s job was lost, and that meant few or no presents under the Christmas tree that year. How could that be? You wondered. Santa was not constrained by money, he could grant any wish to any girl or boy.
Others might have learned the mind-shattering news on a school bus or on a playground. Almost a rite of passage is the asking and answering of that fateful query.
Looking back on my childhood, the time of telling came either early on Christmas morning, or late on Christmas Eve. I had asked Santa, in a letter addressed to the North Pole, for a set of electric trains. How we found model trains so fascinating, I will never know. Still, it was a simpler time when color television was just beginning to make its entry into the world, and many still traveled on trains.
Like most believing youngsters, sleep comes hard on Christmas Eve, and it did to me that night. Then, nature called, and I had to go to the bathroom. Bedrooms were on the second of three floors in my house; down the stairs were the living room and all other necessary rooms.
I absolutely could not believe my ears. It actually sounded like electric trains, just as I remembered them from Scull’s Hardware store on Mechanic Street. It’s there I spent many an afternoon adoring the amazing collection of Lionel trains and the town that went with them. But how could that be, I puzzled, because it was Dad’s voice I heard, uttering some strong language.
Baffled, I returned to bed and, although troubled, made it back to dreamland until morning. When I crept downstairs, sure enough, there was a set of Lionel electric trains, a black locomotive, coal car, boxcar, gondola, flatcar and caboose all set up and ready to go. All I had to do was swing the transformer switch.
Elated though I was, I felt a tinge of guilt. My folks smiled at the happiness they brought me on that Christmas morn. How could I ever tell them I knew? Certainly not something to vocalize that happy day, when the dream had been realized.
Sometime after the holidays were over, I can’t recall exactly, I remember sitting with Mom, with a terrible lump in my throat, and told her what I had heard on Christmas Eve. It was as if I was confessing a sin I’d committed, and for which I needed forgiveness.
Time has erased whatever she said, and I know she relayed to Dad what I’d said.
Fortunately, that did not stop Christmas or the true spirit of Christmas in our home on South Main Street in Court House. From then on, as long as Dad lived, he continued to make a snow village beneath a small Christmas tree. He loved to arrange mounds of cotton to look like the Beaver Falls, Pa. that he recalled as a boy. He would always make certain there was a skater on a small mirror that served as his skating rink.
To this very day, I hope I never lose that juvenile belief that I can ask for anything, and if it’s good and within the realm of possibility, it may come my way. So, yes, in a more refined manner of speaking, I suppose I still believe in Santa Claus, and hope I always will.
I cannot verbalize the feeling nearly as well as did Mr. Church in The Sun:
“Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
“You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
“No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
Thank goodness it is not a belief in Santa that makes a truly merry Christmas, but the understanding that it was God’s gift to the world, His Son. That is the reason for all giving and the celebrations we cherish so dearly.
Merry Christmas to all my fellow train lovers.