Santa

My husband doesn't really do Christmas, or birthdays or anniversaries though he does write cards for the family and he comes to Christmas lunch at my parents' house. This year he has taken to decorating the miniature tree and even brought out, with some pride, his own mini stash of decorations. I got the normal ones down from the attic again last week and was surprised on returning from a quick trip to town to find some of them put up by my husband - and tastefully. Let me say there may be surprises to come, and good ones, in long marriages.

Santa has always been female hereabouts. I imagine she wonders - with regret? with relief? - whether this year (year 12) will be Santa’s last at our house. 

My fizz-popping nine-year-old loves Santa, the letter he writes, the whole shebang. He gets so excited.  If I told you this is the child who broke the springs on the sofa, you would get the idea. So who that can remember that magic or has witnessed it would willingly (Trump aside) want that to end? I say so with a touch of scepticism because this son is a consummate actor and I have little doubt that he would pull the wool over anybody's eyes if it meant a conduit stayed open to a lumpy stocking.

I feel though that stockings, rather like Christmas itself, are better in the expectation that the reality. My elder son I noticed this year would probably concur but he is less keen on mornings generally these days. Actually, I think the younger one mostly enjoys unwrapping presents because he does not seem to pay huge attention to what is inside.

He tells me his friend's family is not religious.

- Oh, really? 

- Yes, Santa, doesn't come to him, continued my son.

- What?

- His family isn't religious so Santa doesn't come.

- Really? Neither is ours and Santa comes to our house I replied, wondering if I'd missed some essential step of logic.

- And they don't celebrate Christmas either.

- Oh. So what do they do?

- They have family time.

- Right. Well, that's odd because Santa isn't to do with being religious, I said, perhaps a little hastily.

- Yes he is, Santa is a Saint, he replied quick-wittedly. I see this son as a potential barrister. He sees himself working in Tesco. I think it is the proximity to sweets. Santa is Saint Nicholas, he said conclusively.

No, I said, matching his conviction. Santa is Santa Claus.  I wondered how far he had twigged to etymology and decided, for once, to forego that lexical adventure. It isn't the same thing.

- It is, he said determinedly.  He is Taurean, like my father. I know what they are like.

- It isn't, I insisted and decided to pull a fast one: Saint Nicholas arrives in a ship to the Netherlands, from Spain, with presents and Black Peter, I said, piling one bamboozling layer on to another. Santa Claus arrives from the North Pole in a sleigh with reindeer. Two completely different things, I added, lightly.

There was no answer to that. Thus, our children try to make sense of the world. I wondered how I had come to be defending Santa. But, I thought a little guiltily, at least I’d kept Coca Cola’a part out of it.

I was always rather troubled, studying philosophy, which is, after all, the search for truth, whether getting involved in Santa was a good idea.  On the one hand, the magic, on the other...difficulty.  I recall A.C. Grayling had an answer for that.  He was our admissions tutor and the best lecturer - or rather, intelligent storyteller - that during nearly eight years at university, or indeed elsewhere, I have ever heard,   I think it was in one of his books that he was talking about the tooth fairy.  The tooth fairy, as you know, brings money, so her existence is in fact, justified belief.