Do You Still Believe?

You better watch out / you better not cry / you better not pout, I'm tellin' you why–

"I'm not so sure about that, kiddo."

I hate being the voice of reason. It's against my nature as a fundamentally unreasonable person, first of all, but more than that–it's no fun.

Unfortunately, my role as a parent requires me to be just that, a wet blanket over the same gleeful unrealities I myself once happily traded in. In this case–as it often is this time of year–it involves me shooting down a Christmas gift request that I have no intention of fulfilling, whether it be for reasons of cost, propriety or safety.

Of course, that's not entirely up to me this time of year.

"I'll just ask Santa for it."

He's making a list, he's checking it twice / going to find out who's naughty and nice–

Since becoming parents a decade ago, my wife and I have been cautious to limit the role of Santa Claus in our Christmas celebrations, for reasons both moral and practical. Don't misunderstand me to be some holiday curmudgeon; we've actively perpetuated the myth in ways both large and small, from dutifully eating the cookies and milk set out for him to assembling a menacingly-difficult play kitchen well into the wee hours of the Christmas Eve night so that it could be under the tree the next morning.

We've never given the big guy full credit, though. Even when our kids were small, it's always been made clear to them that the bulk of their presents were, in fact, coming from us. The moral reasoning for this is sound, at least in my mind: how else do you explain to young children why they have things that others do not? I'd rather start a conversation about privilege early than let them believe that Santa loves them more than other kids.

The practical reason? We can't keep everything hidden. Best to allow yourself a margin of error.

He sees you when you're sleeping / he knows when you're awake / he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake–

My kids are smart. I know every parent thinks this about their own children, but mine actually are, okay? Their grades and test scores are excellent, their vocabularies immense, and their ability to out-reason me in arguments is growing at an alarming rate. They're worldly, well-read and better at long division than I am.

They're smart enough to know by now, is what I'm saying.

I once zealously guarded their belief in Santa. Some years ago, we started watching The Santa Clause as a family, only for me to feign an abrupt internet outage a few minutes in when I feared that the characters were talking a little too much about how Santa was actually just your parents. The concept would be refuted later in the movie (Santa's actually Tim Allen) but it was one that I didn't even want in discussion at the time. They'd figure it out soon enough on their own, I knew.

"This might be the last year," I said wistfully to my wife several years ago.

Little tin horns and little toy drums / rooty-toot-toots and rummy-tum-tums–

I'm almost positive that they know.

My son freely discusses the concept; it apparently exists as an open controversy amongst his grade-school cohort. "Yeah, some kids think Santa's just your parents," he notes with a bemused tone that falls short of endorsing the notion himself. "I think I'll sleep on the couch on Christmas Eve so I can see for myself," he adds in a Linus-like wrinkle.

My daughter, the younger and more frightening (complimentary) of my children, takes a more direct approach.

"We should ask Mom and Dad for something that we know they won't get us, because if we don't get it, then we'll know they're Santa," she remarked to her brother recently, holding eye contact with me all the while.

They haven't asked me, though, and I'm not about to offer it up until they do.

The kids in girl and boyland will have a jubilee / They're gonna build a toyland town all around the Christmas tree–

Those early parenting years? They go a lot faster than you think.

That sentiment's beaten into your head when you're a new parent, but it's hard to believe it when you're struggling with late night feedings, sleep regressions, toilet trainings and first-day-of-school tears. The first year of being a parent aged me like the beach from that M. Night Shyamalan movie (I never saw it), and that wasn't half as rough as the following year, when I suddenly had two kids.

Time moved real slow for a while there, until it suddenly got moving in a big darn hurry.

My son doesn't ask to be carried to bed anymore, not even when he's dog-tired from staying up too late on a Friday night. My daughter's too big for piggy-back rides, and while both of these things are probably good news for my increasingly-tenuous back, I still lament their loss. It wasn't that long ago that we had them convinced that the Christmas tree lit up when they said hello, Christmas!, but they've long since spotted the remote control behind my back. They can sleep through thunderstorms, make their own breakfasts and beat me to the punchlines of my own corny jokes. The little bits of magic are disappearing fast.

That's why–even if they know the truth about Santa–I refuse to blink first.

So, you better watch out / you better not cry / you better not pout, I'm tellin' you why / Santa Claus is comin' to town–

They already know that the world isn't a perfect place.

They know that they have more than most; they know that there are kids just like them who'll be lucky to get anything this Christmas. They know there is hunger, violence and hatred out there. We don't wallow in the harsh realities, but we don't hide from them either.

When they ask about the world, I tell them the truth, as plainly as I can–not to harden them against it, but to remind them how much work there is to do.

This past weekend, we all went shopping for a 'Secret Shopper' drive run by their school, picking out gifts for an anonymous fellow student. I bring this up not to pat ourselves on the back for a small act of charity–I know we could be doing more–but because it represented a scenario where the obvious truth of the 'Santa' question loomed unspoken over all of us.

They weren't troubled by the contradiction, and the dare-you-to-blink-first comments and thoughts of what they wanted disappeared. They were excited to do something for someone else–happy to pick out what they thought was cool, what they thought was best, what they thought this kid would like.

Maybe I never have to tell them the truth. They already know.

Of course Santa's real. He just needs some help.

–Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)