Santa Claus: Fact or Fiction

Several weeks ago I participated in a 5 Question Friday that Mama at My Little Life hosts each week.  One of the questions that week was in regards to how long you believed in Santa Claus and how you found out that he doesn't exist.

I still believe in Santa Claus.  I realize that he doesn't deliver toys to millions of children on Christmas Eve and that he doesn't pop down our chimney and fill our stockings.  I understand that.  I also understand that it was my mom who played Santa when I was a kid.

Yet, the person that our traditional Santa Claus is today, was modeled after an actual person.  After a Saint, who simply tried to bring happiness to another person's life with nothing asked for in return.  Sometimes I even wonder if the real Saint wasn't a legend as well.  Or perhaps he was modeled after someone else who gave their life without asking for anything in return.

I hate these people who teach their kids that he didn't exist, or even worse that Christmas is simply a time for greed and to expand their toy box.  I think that we tend to overdo in the gift giving and other "requirements" that we feel have been passed on to us each year.  You know what I mean, finding the perfect gift for everyone on your list from Aunt Betty to Uncle Steve.  You have to get them all something magnificent.  Then you have to buy stuff for your kids and for your kids from Santa.  It's a real mess, and I can imagine a real headache for a parent to put up with.  I don't have children, so I can only speculate.

I used to have a story that passed through my email a few years ago, that I would love to find again.  It was about a young boy who came home from school quite upset, because his friends had made fun of him and told him that Santa didn't exist.  The father, instead of confirming the young boys fears, told his son of Jesus birth and how Santa helped to celebrate the day, not how Christmas day was all about Santa.

I remember when I began to question Santa's existence.  I remember standing in the field with my grandfather.  We were walking looking for a cow who had gone off to have her calf.  I told him that one of my friends told me that there was no such thing as Santa and that it was really my mama. 

He could have told me a 100 different things.  He could have admitted that it was a sham.  But I think that he knew, on some level, how that would have destroyed my faith in all the things that my parents had told me, not just about Santa and Christmas, but about so much more.

Instead he begins to tell remind me that Christmas is about more than just Santa.  He began to tell me about how every good thing I did for someone who didn't have as much as I did, that I was doing Santa's work.  That in fact Santa was just a messenger or helper for someone higher up the chain of command.  It was the only time in my life that I can ever remember my grandfather openly discussing God.

I think that we live in a world where we put out so many different things.  Santa, the Easter Bunny, Leprechauns, fairies and imaginary friends.  We put so much into finding and buying the perfect gift that we so often forget that Christmas is about so much more than that.

It's about celebrating a birthday.  It's about renewing our faith.  It's about remembering our own childhood as we witness the joy in our children.  It's not about the presents, or the tinsel.  Maybe we all need to remember that and find the true meaning of Christmas before another year passes us by.

~Christmas is a time to open our hearts to God and his gifts.  Just like the rest of the year.  ~Author Unknown
~And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?  It came without ribbons.  It came without tags.  It came without packages, boxes or bags.  And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore.  Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.  What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.  What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.  ~Dr Seuss