Skip to main content

Yes, Virginia . . .


Yes, there is a Santa Claus.  There, I’ve said it.
He may not dress in a red suit and drive a sleigh driven by magical reindeer.  He may look more like Mommy and Daddy and drive an econo car, but he exists. “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist.”
The world out there is ugly and cruel, a nightmare where incomprehensible things happen in front of and to our babies, so why not allow them a joyful childhood within the safety of their homes, among the people who love and understand them the most? “There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.” How wonderful to listen to their giggles, or to watch their eyes when they open their presents or see the feast you set before them.
We can argue religion or commercialism, but who ultimately teaches that to our children?  Who controls that within our homes? 
My three grew up knowing that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus, yet they wanted to pretend and enjoy the magic of Santa Claus as well. I saw them play with the baby Jesus statue in the Nativity Set. They marched the Three Kings around the dining room looking for the star.  They’d kiss the baby and tuck him in at night, yet they also watched every Christmas special on TV and wrote letters to Santa, knowing full well they were writing them to me. 
If the gift giving gets out of hand, whose fault is it?
“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” Allow your children the use of their imaginations.  Believing in him is no different than playing pirates or pretending to be a princess, getting lost in a book, or cheering for our favorite sports team. Believing in him teaches them that being good and working hard will be rewarded.  Someone loves children so much he wants to bring them joy.
“How dreary would be the world if there would be no Santa Claus!” How dreary would be our world if we didn’t have the laughter and the innocence of little children.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Elizabeth Byler YountsDecember 25, 2012 at 12:23 AM

    This is what we do with our girlies also. They have fun with the imagination of Santa while learning the real story of St Nicolas and, of course, about Jesus and his mission to bring true hope and grace into our world. :-) thanks for this post and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Raquel Martina MartinezDecember 25, 2012 at 6:36 AM

      Merry Christmas with your little girls and dear husband.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Breastday to Me!

I gave myself a very special birthday present this year – I had surgery. Before you think it was to increase, decrease, or “lift” something, let me tell you it was not cosmetic (though I could probably use a few nips and tucks at my age; the infinite number of creams I buy OTC are not working their promised magic). About four or five months ago, I discovered a hard lump about the size of a large marble in my left armpit.  I had been feeling small pangs of pain in my left chest for several months, but I figured it was just my turn to dance with heart disease.  Everyone in my immediate family is diabetic and suffers from strokes or heart attacks, so I thought – here we go; my turn. I was going to tell my internist about the pangs during my next visit, so imagine my surprise when I discovered the lump. The Drama Queen in me immediately manifested herself – cancer, I thought.  I have cancer. I searched some more and found that the texture on the left side of my left breast felt diffe
9 comments
Read more

Dating Challenged

I stink at dating – always have.   I sputter.   I hyperventilate.   I fail miserably every time. I blame a pathetically underdeveloped gene that got little use before I married in my early twenties, then atrophied, gathering dust and rust, until I became single again in my fifties.   I decided to use this defect to my advantage when I needed to do some investigative reporting a few years back.   While on a newspaper writing assignment on Boomer-aged dating, I sacrificed my dignity and my vanity for the sake of the story (and I got several). Thank goodness, HoneyBunch saved me from all this when we married.  (He comes up with the best dates.) I’ve decided I will “show you mine if you show me yours.”   I will swap dating horror stories with you, but you have to promise to play along. The trick here is to tell about your worst date in 25 words or less.   You must keep it clean and you cannot name names. Our little contest will run only this week and before my next blogger posting.   Me
8 comments
Read more

The Girl Who Eats Canned Spinach

I went to a Catholic elementary school run by strict Belgian nuns, and we could not leave the cafeteria until we ate everything served on our food tray. Once a week, they served warmed, canned spinach with our meal. The spinach tasted nothing like the way my grandmother made it, but I ate it. I gulped it down in three or four bites and it amazed my table mates. I told them we ate it at home so I was used to the taste. Now, my real problem began the day I ate the spinach off my friends’ trays so we could go play outside. As soon as the nun monitoring the cafeteria turned her back, my friends ate something off my tray I didn’t want, and I ate their serving of spinach. I only did it for two of my table mates, but the word spread.   On the next Spinach Day, kids followed me to my table.   I was suddenly very popular, and as soon as the nun marched off to the other end of the cafeteria, my friends and an army of others who only knew me as The Girl Who Eats Spinach, begged me to take
8 comments
Read more