I never believed in the concept of the white bearded one. Never that I can recall. But to this day, I still believe in the concept of the Santa inside all of us, the ability to be good, to give freely, and live selflessly.
Not sure if I should share this but we actually had a cardboard "fireplace" that we put together each year when my brother and I were young. We hung our stockings on it and there was a little plug in light with foil "leaves" around it as the fire. We lived in an apartment so that was how Santa got in :)
I was in kindergarden when a smarty pants fellow student felt compelled to inform me that Santa wasn't real. I didn't buy it for a moment. Santa is the spirit of love and giving and joy, and that belongs to all of us. What's more real than that? Shut that smarmy little know it all right up.
Why people feel so compelled to steal each other's joy has never made sense to me.
"You should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans." Tom Robbins
"Why people feel so compelled to steal each other's joy has never made sense to me."
I have often asked myself the same thing and can only answer with another cliche, "Misery loves company."
I will say that energetically (from a bodywork perspective) those who are unhappy will do almost anything to get energy even if it is negative. It's a hard habit to break.
Sure seems that way, doesn’t it. I don’t even remember when I learned or how, or how I felt about it. I pretended longer because I had two younger brothers.
Love this, Margot. A family member believed for a lot longer than most kids, but the family did not spoil it for them, and they weren't harmed in any way by holding on to the magic — some of which I'd say they still carry with them a lifetime later.
For me it was also second grade. A classmate told me during some sort of holiday assembly. It was quite the time period, as just weeks before, we had been informed by the principal through the intercom, that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in some place called Dallas. My teacher was very upset also. Maybe that’s why when my classmate told me about Santa Claus, that I immediately knew it to be true. Much later I figured out Santa was really my Dad, and that was okay by me.
I love it too! (And we're approximately the same age--I was in second grade when JFK was assassinated, an event I remember vividly, unlike hearing there wasn't any Santa, which I don't remember at all, but I suspect it was kindergarten or first grade, and probably the latter)
I was about 6-7, laying in my top bunk bed. My horrid older sister told me. I did not believe her and asked my folks. She got in trouble. Ha. Ha. We do not speak to this day. Beastly witch.So much for the holiday spirit over here! 🤣🤪
I am the rowdy one and she is the goodie two shoes. Oil & water. When the chips are down,we circle the wagons, stand back to back with swords drawn.No one can go after us ... except ...each other.
I never had the pleasure of such fanciful belief. I grew up in a religious sect that outlawed all holidays and the joy that came with it. But take heart: I get to keep the legend alive with my nephew until he too gets disillusioned.
Edited to add: I have ZERO plans on bursting his bubble anytime soon, if at all ❤️
My family never pretended that there was a Santa Claus. But, my mother taught me to be generous, kind, and helpful whenever I could. You know, aspire to being Mr. Rogers or someone like him with your own skill sets. My mom also was not into doing things for credit so if you do it for credit, it really doesn't count.
I believe in the power of people, and we will see a lot of goodness amidst the shit (and have seen it in the past). We need to remember these individuals and aspire to their courage.
Having read Tribe, by Sebastian Junger, I believe in the power of people to do amazing things when each person is depending on the others. It's amazing what people can do when everyone depends on everyone else. Under those circumstances, it is amazing what people can do. I view Tribe as the most important book I've read in my adult life.
And... after you read Tribe, maybe long enough after that you've internalized all the understanding one can get from Tribe, only THEN do you read Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, about how Ernest Shackleton's boat (which was recently found after a hundred years) was chewed up and spat out by Antarctic ice, leaving Shackleton and his 28 men stranded in the frigid cold, and how they spent a whole month pulling the three lifeboats filled with tools and other stuff from the boat that they needed until they reached open water.
Then they sailed through the worst waters on the planet, on the first leg of their voyage back to civilization.
There's much more, but the fascinating thing to me is that ALL 29 MEN made it back to civilization. Even the guy who had a heart attack during the return trip, and even the guy who'd had a good bit of his foot amputated. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT?!
But having read Tribe, it did not seem nearly as surprising to me as it would have seemed had I not read Tribe.
E. Jean, changing the subject slightly, I became an atheist at age 9. With the help of today's question from you, I'm thinking that my ease of ceasing to believe in Santa Claus presaged my early atheism. I've learned something about myself today.
Santa always arrived at our house while we were at Christmas Even church service. I noticed when I was around 5 that my dad would either hang back as we were getting in the car or skip church due to a made-up illness. My brother was a year older but hadn't put this information together so I got to be the one to burst his bubble!
My daughter once asked "Is the Easter Bunny real, or is it a trick played by Santa Claus?" It was so hard to answer her with a straight face!
My parents were militant atheists (who nevertheless could believe that Irish ancestors were shaming me in Heaven if I wore a skirt that was too short).
They told me that Santa Claus was a myth, that the tradition was fun for children, and that we could open presents knowing that Santa was a marketing ploy and God was dead. I was hence under no illusions about Santa.
They were overly earnest generally. If I had been a very good girl, I could stay up and watch the nightly news with them. I watched videos (at age 3) of combat in the Vietnam War, with calm voices telling me about the number of dead, and I asked a rather obvious question about it -- "Why is there war?" It seemed bad that people got killed, but the voice on the television sounded so calm, even bored.
At the end of the program, they tried to tell 3 year-old me about the history of combat, and I remember blinking a lot. I wasn't used to this much intense adult attention. I didn't understand much. I understood that my parents didn't like the war in Vietnam. They thought it was bad that people were dying. The rest, I couldn't understand.
Finally, when they stopped talking and waited for some kind of response from me, it seemed, I asked the only question that seemed clear in my mind.
I asked, "Mommy, when you were a little girl, was there a war?"
She had been a child during the World War II, and she said that there had been one then.
"Can I go play now?" I asked.
I took out my dolls and pondered what I had been told. Apparently, war was a thing that grownups thought was perfectly sensible. If it happened as far back as when my mother was my current age, it was probably an eternal state of things, and it MUST make sense because otherwise adults would have stopped having wars long ago, I thought.
But still, watching those soldiers drag dead bodies out of the jungle, none of that looked like it benefitted anyone. When I was older, surely I'd see the clear reasons in favor of war's existence generally. In the mean time, dolls that had been placed in boxes marked "TO: Anne FROM: Santa" before I unwrapped them were dancing in my hands.
Surely all this made sense. When I was a big girl, I'd understand all of it.
I loved this whole memoir, Anne.....even though it took me a couple of minutes to recover from the thrill of reading:
"My parents were militant atheists (who nevertheless could believe that Irish ancestors were shaming me in Heaven if I wore a skirt that was too short)."
Funny how the second I might be a slut, God could suddenly exist, my ancestors would remain in life eternally if only in order to shake their heads and lament that I had gone “beyond the beyonds!”
LBJ was a tragic figure in the true sense of that word. He wanted more than anything to make peoples' lives better. For a close-up view of the '60s, see An Unfinished Love Story, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It gave me a much more nuanced view of that decade and the people (such as LBJ) who made it what it was (some of which was very good).
WHAT? There is no Santa Clause?!! Then how do you explain that jolly guy who comes to our house every year!! (We also, being Jewish, host the Passover Bunny, every year, who always brings marshmallow peeps.)
It was the first day of first grade and our teacher Mrs. Fancourt told us that we were now adults it was time to learn that there was NO Santa. Boy was she a bitch. Luckily I got rheumatic fever and spent most of the next couple of years in bed. Had to find some way out of that place.
I was maybe 6-7 and had just learned to read. That’s when I realized that the watercolor paint set (which was supposedly a gift from Santa and thus made at the North Pole) was labeled “Made in Japan.” I was suspicious and eventually confronted my mother who admitted that yes, there is no Santa. For a while, I wondered if there was a Japanese equivalent of Santa who had brought the paint set but, eventually, stopped believing in a jolly old elf of any ethnicity.
I've always been a grinch about Christmas and I never believed. I remember feeling anguished at 5 years old about having to keep up the charade for others.
We don't celebrate holidays or birthdays at hour house because we try to make every day a celebration. Happy b'day E. Jean. I celebrate you 365 days a year!
I always have loved the holidays. I stopped believing in the fat red dude when I received a wastebasket for the big day when I was five years old. EDITED TO ADD: The wastebasket was the only gift. I stopped being a follower of the Roman Catholic religon at thirty, and stopped believing in any deity at forty nine, after a lifetime of illness and finally common sense told me that this life is it. I still decorate, put up a tree and stocking, and buy gifts for family and friends children. The idea of spreading joy and spending time with my family was my motivation. My husband and I have reflected, and going forward, will still decorate and gather, but no more material items. It has taken a literal lifetime to let go of the whole idea of consumerism, and just want to be. Peace to all who celebrate and don't...it's not my business. Just do you. Message to any republicans reading this...I wish you everything you voted for. As Stanley Tucci famously said..."gird your loins".
I was seven when a girl named Glinda told me. I went to my mom and asked her if what Glinda said was true. Mom said yes. Then Mom seized the moment and revealed the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy as not real. That part had not yet occurred to me. I was devastated. So, I told my younger sister who was five.
Wait.... WHAT?!!
Har!!!!!!!!!!!
(Just kidding! 🤣 )
Heeeeeee!
Hahaha!
*snort*
🙌🙌🙌
🤣🤣
LOVE you Terrell
Of course our E.Jean was just kidding
My thought exactly!
Hahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!
I never believed in the concept of the white bearded one. Never that I can recall. But to this day, I still believe in the concept of the Santa inside all of us, the ability to be good, to give freely, and live selflessly.
well stated
Yes.
That's a very sweet and kind thought.
That is very sweet
I do love that about the concept.
That certainly works well!
I pretty much figured it out for myself because we didn't have a fireplace.
Diane! You just cracked me up!!
I kept asking my parents how he was gonna get in the house and they didn't have an answer for me.
Hahahahaah!!!!!!
SNORT! Yeah that pretty much puts a damper on the whole thing doesn't it?
Have you seen this great commercial about the challenges Santa faces? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v77sQaYYXEs
damper. cute play on words there, Jena
Yeah, no pun intended?
Ha!
I see what you did there.
Looks around innocently. What?
Ah hah. 😛
I see what you just did Jena...hahaha!
Who me?
No gifts for you!
LOL
Not sure if I should share this but we actually had a cardboard "fireplace" that we put together each year when my brother and I were young. We hung our stockings on it and there was a little plug in light with foil "leaves" around it as the fire. We lived in an apartment so that was how Santa got in :)
Omg too funny!
Hahahaah!!!! We sometimes did have a fireplace and sometimes not, but I just thought Santa wold come in the window.
Love your answer, Liza!
I am of the latter variety of human.
I was in kindergarden when a smarty pants fellow student felt compelled to inform me that Santa wasn't real. I didn't buy it for a moment. Santa is the spirit of love and giving and joy, and that belongs to all of us. What's more real than that? Shut that smarmy little know it all right up.
Why people feel so compelled to steal each other's joy has never made sense to me.
"You should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans." Tom Robbins
Magic is everywhere, we just have to believe.
"You should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans." Tom Robbins
Stealing each other's joy----so well put, Margot!
Thank you, E. Jean! You bring the joy on the regular! ✨
"Why people feel so compelled to steal each other's joy has never made sense to me."
I have often asked myself the same thing and can only answer with another cliche, "Misery loves company."
I will say that energetically (from a bodywork perspective) those who are unhappy will do almost anything to get energy even if it is negative. It's a hard habit to break.
Thank you for being one of the magic makers.
Eggggzactly----misery DOES adore company!
Sure seems that way, doesn’t it. I don’t even remember when I learned or how, or how I felt about it. I pretended longer because I had two younger brothers.
Thank you, magic maker Jena!
Smiles and throws glitter over us both ;-) YVW, of course!
Second
Love this, Margot. A family member believed for a lot longer than most kids, but the family did not spoil it for them, and they weren't harmed in any way by holding on to the magic — some of which I'd say they still carry with them a lifetime later.
I love that so much!
Oh that makes me so happy :-)
Your comment is beautiful, Margot. ❤️
Thank you!
Funsuckers. They’re everywhere.
Truth.
For me it was also second grade. A classmate told me during some sort of holiday assembly. It was quite the time period, as just weeks before, we had been informed by the principal through the intercom, that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in some place called Dallas. My teacher was very upset also. Maybe that’s why when my classmate told me about Santa Claus, that I immediately knew it to be true. Much later I figured out Santa was really my Dad, and that was okay by me.
I love this, Wildflower!
Thanks.
I love it too! (And we're approximately the same age--I was in second grade when JFK was assassinated, an event I remember vividly, unlike hearing there wasn't any Santa, which I don't remember at all, but I suspect it was kindergarten or first grade, and probably the latter)
I was about 6-7, laying in my top bunk bed. My horrid older sister told me. I did not believe her and asked my folks. She got in trouble. Ha. Ha. We do not speak to this day. Beastly witch.So much for the holiday spirit over here! 🤣🤪
Good heavens!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Naw.
It is all good.
I am the rowdy one and she is the goodie two shoes. Oil & water. When the chips are down,we circle the wagons, stand back to back with swords drawn.No one can go after us ... except ...each other.
Same vibe here with my sis.
I'm so sorry that happened. She told you early on who she was.
Omg!
We may have had the same older sister for a while.
I never had the pleasure of such fanciful belief. I grew up in a religious sect that outlawed all holidays and the joy that came with it. But take heart: I get to keep the legend alive with my nephew until he too gets disillusioned.
Edited to add: I have ZERO plans on bursting his bubble anytime soon, if at all ❤️
I am so happy for your nephew, Jasmyn!
My family never pretended that there was a Santa Claus. But, my mother taught me to be generous, kind, and helpful whenever I could. You know, aspire to being Mr. Rogers or someone like him with your own skill sets. My mom also was not into doing things for credit so if you do it for credit, it really doesn't count.
I believe in the power of people, and we will see a lot of goodness amidst the shit (and have seen it in the past). We need to remember these individuals and aspire to their courage.
"I believe in the power of people, and we will see a lot of goodness amidst the shit," lookin at YOU, Sphinxy!
Oh, you just made me well up. I love you.
Having read Tribe, by Sebastian Junger, I believe in the power of people to do amazing things when each person is depending on the others. It's amazing what people can do when everyone depends on everyone else. Under those circumstances, it is amazing what people can do. I view Tribe as the most important book I've read in my adult life.
And... after you read Tribe, maybe long enough after that you've internalized all the understanding one can get from Tribe, only THEN do you read Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, about how Ernest Shackleton's boat (which was recently found after a hundred years) was chewed up and spat out by Antarctic ice, leaving Shackleton and his 28 men stranded in the frigid cold, and how they spent a whole month pulling the three lifeboats filled with tools and other stuff from the boat that they needed until they reached open water.
Then they sailed through the worst waters on the planet, on the first leg of their voyage back to civilization.
There's much more, but the fascinating thing to me is that ALL 29 MEN made it back to civilization. Even the guy who had a heart attack during the return trip, and even the guy who'd had a good bit of his foot amputated. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT?!
But having read Tribe, it did not seem nearly as surprising to me as it would have seemed had I not read Tribe.
Thank you, David!! I have been meaning to REMEMBER to read this!
E. Jean, changing the subject slightly, I became an atheist at age 9. With the help of today's question from you, I'm thinking that my ease of ceasing to believe in Santa Claus presaged my early atheism. I've learned something about myself today.
should I remind you in a week or two?
You're welcome E. Jean! I just love being a member of your substack!
I’m finding this book. Now
Santa always arrived at our house while we were at Christmas Even church service. I noticed when I was around 5 that my dad would either hang back as we were getting in the car or skip church due to a made-up illness. My brother was a year older but hadn't put this information together so I got to be the one to burst his bubble!
My daughter once asked "Is the Easter Bunny real, or is it a trick played by Santa Claus?" It was so hard to answer her with a straight face!
Your daughter is a genius, Hollie!
Santa has eyes on the ground all year!
PRECISELY and marvelously said, Lisa!!
How did u answer such a wise question??
My parents were militant atheists (who nevertheless could believe that Irish ancestors were shaming me in Heaven if I wore a skirt that was too short).
They told me that Santa Claus was a myth, that the tradition was fun for children, and that we could open presents knowing that Santa was a marketing ploy and God was dead. I was hence under no illusions about Santa.
They were overly earnest generally. If I had been a very good girl, I could stay up and watch the nightly news with them. I watched videos (at age 3) of combat in the Vietnam War, with calm voices telling me about the number of dead, and I asked a rather obvious question about it -- "Why is there war?" It seemed bad that people got killed, but the voice on the television sounded so calm, even bored.
At the end of the program, they tried to tell 3 year-old me about the history of combat, and I remember blinking a lot. I wasn't used to this much intense adult attention. I didn't understand much. I understood that my parents didn't like the war in Vietnam. They thought it was bad that people were dying. The rest, I couldn't understand.
Finally, when they stopped talking and waited for some kind of response from me, it seemed, I asked the only question that seemed clear in my mind.
I asked, "Mommy, when you were a little girl, was there a war?"
She had been a child during the World War II, and she said that there had been one then.
"Can I go play now?" I asked.
I took out my dolls and pondered what I had been told. Apparently, war was a thing that grownups thought was perfectly sensible. If it happened as far back as when my mother was my current age, it was probably an eternal state of things, and it MUST make sense because otherwise adults would have stopped having wars long ago, I thought.
But still, watching those soldiers drag dead bodies out of the jungle, none of that looked like it benefitted anyone. When I was older, surely I'd see the clear reasons in favor of war's existence generally. In the mean time, dolls that had been placed in boxes marked "TO: Anne FROM: Santa" before I unwrapped them were dancing in my hands.
Surely all this made sense. When I was a big girl, I'd understand all of it.
I loved this whole memoir, Anne.....even though it took me a couple of minutes to recover from the thrill of reading:
"My parents were militant atheists (who nevertheless could believe that Irish ancestors were shaming me in Heaven if I wore a skirt that was too short)."
Funny how the second I might be a slut, God could suddenly exist, my ancestors would remain in life eternally if only in order to shake their heads and lament that I had gone “beyond the beyonds!”
LBJ was a tragic figure in the true sense of that word. He wanted more than anything to make peoples' lives better. For a close-up view of the '60s, see An Unfinished Love Story, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It gave me a much more nuanced view of that decade and the people (such as LBJ) who made it what it was (some of which was very good).
WHAT? There is no Santa Clause?!! Then how do you explain that jolly guy who comes to our house every year!! (We also, being Jewish, host the Passover Bunny, every year, who always brings marshmallow peeps.)
I think a lot of jolly people like coming to your house every year, Caroline!!
It was the first day of first grade and our teacher Mrs. Fancourt told us that we were now adults it was time to learn that there was NO Santa. Boy was she a bitch. Luckily I got rheumatic fever and spent most of the next couple of years in bed. Had to find some way out of that place.
Are you kidding???! Dang, Cynthia! That is rough!
That was a shitty thing for her to do.
Mrs Fancourt was the original Ganster Grinch!! Brutal!!!
Yikes! What an awful thing to do.
Maybe it was my first grade teacher who disabused me of my belief in Santa Claus. She was certainly a bitch!
I was maybe 6-7 and had just learned to read. That’s when I realized that the watercolor paint set (which was supposedly a gift from Santa and thus made at the North Pole) was labeled “Made in Japan.” I was suspicious and eventually confronted my mother who admitted that yes, there is no Santa. For a while, I wondered if there was a Japanese equivalent of Santa who had brought the paint set but, eventually, stopped believing in a jolly old elf of any ethnicity.
You were an extremely bright child, Eileen!
LOL deductive reasoning at six!
I got a good laugh out of your story, Eileen!
I've always been a grinch about Christmas and I never believed. I remember feeling anguished at 5 years old about having to keep up the charade for others.
We don't celebrate holidays or birthdays at hour house because we try to make every day a celebration. Happy b'day E. Jean. I celebrate you 365 days a year!
You remembered! Gayle!!!!
How can I forget when I'm sandwiched between the amazing E. Jean and the fabulous Taylor Swfit? December is memorable for more than Xmas!
YOU are never SANDWICHED!!!!
YOU AND I AND TAYLOR ARE CAKE!
From here on out I will think of myself as snuggled!
Happy bday E. Jean? Happy bday E. Jean!!!
Thank you, David!
You are most welcome, E. Jean!
Happiest of days to you, EJC!
Lisa! Hail! And Holly! Holy! To you!
I always have loved the holidays. I stopped believing in the fat red dude when I received a wastebasket for the big day when I was five years old. EDITED TO ADD: The wastebasket was the only gift. I stopped being a follower of the Roman Catholic religon at thirty, and stopped believing in any deity at forty nine, after a lifetime of illness and finally common sense told me that this life is it. I still decorate, put up a tree and stocking, and buy gifts for family and friends children. The idea of spreading joy and spending time with my family was my motivation. My husband and I have reflected, and going forward, will still decorate and gather, but no more material items. It has taken a literal lifetime to let go of the whole idea of consumerism, and just want to be. Peace to all who celebrate and don't...it's not my business. Just do you. Message to any republicans reading this...I wish you everything you voted for. As Stanley Tucci famously said..."gird your loins".
And to you, dear Fitzified!
I was seven when a girl named Glinda told me. I went to my mom and asked her if what Glinda said was true. Mom said yes. Then Mom seized the moment and revealed the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy as not real. That part had not yet occurred to me. I was devastated. So, I told my younger sister who was five.
Oh! MARJORIE!! I have tears from howling with laughter! Your story in my madeup poem:
The Great Revelation of 1993
…(Or: How I Learned the Truth and Shared the Pain)
___
Oh HONEY, let me tell you 'bout the day I lost my MIND
When Glinda dropped the TRUTH BOMB of the most dramatic kind!
My seven-year-old brain went *POOF* with information new,
So naturally, I RAN to Mom to check if it was true!
.
And there she stood, my mother dear, with WISDOM in her eyes,
She seized the moment – BAM! KA-POW! – no more sweet fairy lies!
The Easter Bunny? FAKE NEWS, kid! The Tooth Fairy? A SHAM!
I stood there processing this fact like a broken Windows.exe program!
.
But wait... there's MORE! (There's always more!)
My sister, sweet and five,
Was living in her BUBBLE world, so blissfully alive!
Did I protect her innocence? MAINTAIN the status quo?
ABSOLUTELY NOT, my friends! That's not how siblings go!
.
Because if I must carry this EXISTENTIAL WEIGHT,
My little sister's joining me – we'll SPIRAL through this fate!
Some call it harsh, I call it fair, with just a touch of SPITE
We're in this DISILLUSIONED BOAT, and now we're holding tight!
.
*Jazz hands while sobbing*
Gloria! You are the BLAZING reincarnation of the madcap fairy queen if the madcap fairy queen was a poet!
Ha!!!! E. Jean, I am a “fairy” don’t you know, a madcap—most definitely
and, hopefully, a decent poet.
You are,
What a whoooolop, Marjorie!
OMG, this is pretty much the inverse of my story!