Author Stella MacLean: My love affair with Santa
Stella MacLean, whose The Christmas Inn came out at the end of October, fondly remembers when her love affair with Santa Claus began ...
Stella: I have a confession to make. I love Santa. Yeah, I know he's an old man with a questionable pedigree, a figment of my imagination, a man whose time has passed in my life. And I know it sounds weird that a grown woman would be in love with a mythical man, a woman who faithfully watches Miracle on 34th Street every Christmas and listens enchanted to a wonderful story, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.
After all these years I still remember how it felt to believe in him, a belief dismantled by a world-weary classmate who announced — in a tone designed to prove that I wasn't all that bright if I still thought Santa was real — that Santa didn't exist. And to add insult to injury, it was my dad who ate the lunch I left for Santa. Devastated, I defended my belief only to have my defense met with laughter by many of my classmates.
As much as I didn't want to believe them, I couldn't help but ask questions. Questions that led me to see the flawed logic offered by my parents as to how the whole Santa thing worked.
How was it that an overweight senior, traveling alone, managed to ride a bumpy old sleigh with no protection from the weather from house to house with only a bunch of aging reindeer for companionship and support?
How did Santa manage to keep the bag of toys on the sleigh as he roared around the night sky? How did he travel fast enough to cover the whole world in one night?
How (and this is the most important one) did he manage to wedge his lumpy behind down a chimney designed only for the release of smoke from a cozy fire? And what if the ashes were still hot when he finally did manage to slide down the chimney?
What if the fireplace had a pointy grate … ouch!
What did he do when he arrived on the roof of a house with no chimney?
How did he know which window would be left open to let him in? (Our parents' explanation for a house without a chimney was that Santa had to use a window.)
How did this dear old gentleman ever manage to eat every single lunch left out for him by every kid in the world without barfing?
And so I faced the long walk across the drawbridge from my safe, magical childhood into a much wider, more cynical world where Santa was reduced to a marketing tool.
On the surface that should have been the end of the Santa thing for me, but it wasn't. Every Christmas when my children were young I happily returned to my belief in Santa. And like my parents before me I defended the existence of my mythical man. And when my grandchildren arrived, I fought hard to keep Santa's secret, only to see them come to the realization that Santa didn't really exist.
Despite everything, I still love the old guy. I still give over a part of my Christmas Eve remembering the magical record player he gave me, the one gift my parents said I probably wouldn't get — today's world would call it managing expectations. Yet I remember that wonder-filled Christmas morning when I raced down the stairs to discover the record player next to the tree with three pink plastic records, four black ones and three red ones. I still have one of the red plastic records, the grooves that provided the music worn beyond use. Yet the memory of that Christmas, of what an old man in a red suit meant to me, comes alive every year.
To find out more about Stella and her books, you can visit her website, StellaMacLean.com.