The Training Wheels for Fraud

Em is about the age where I was when some other kid had heard the news about Santa and decided to do me the kindness of shattering the fantasy. But when I speak of the traditions in other countries (such as the Swiss tradition of having Schmutzli run around with Samichlaus to beat naughty kids with a stick), Em emphatically states that I'm on a collision course with a lump of coal.

Sedaris' account of 'six to eight black men' who are 'former slaves' of Santa in Holland gets her blood boiling too. The 'former bishop of Turkey' who dresses like the Pope and lives in Spain is just whack as far as Emily is concerned, and the notion of six to eight black men who might beat you with a switch, kick you or kidnap you to Spain if you were really awful, well that goes beyond mere Christmas blaspheming and crosses into stuff she says will give her nightmares.

Not that the American Santa from the North Pole is without things for Em to worry about. When she was younger, she worried that he was basically a home invader and that he might come into her room to bother her. I assured her that he was way too busy for that, and that if Santa was the kind of dude who would come into a kid's bedroom to scare them, he'd meet with a violent end at the hands of vigilante parents.

This, oddly, was exactly what she needed to hear, and she quit worrying about that. But she frets that he might not get enough to eat, wanting to heap nine or ten cookies on the plate. The fact that Santa is morbidly obese doesn't seem to register with her as a problem, but the pipe bugs her. Lip, mouth, throat and lung cancer, as well as emphysema could result if he keeps smoking. I refrain from telling her that in order to go up and down chimneys and trust reindeer to fly you through the sky, that Santa's pipe probably does not contain Borkum Riff. I rather suspect the American Santa's pipe contains a mixture of crack cocaine, opium and high-test marijuana. That's why he has the munchies: St. Nick is higher than a freed balloon.

But I feed the faith, mainly because Em enjoys it so much, and because I know it's coming soon that some shit class-mate is going to expose me as an imposter.

I've seen Xtians defend the Santa thing as the 'training wheels for God,' which never made sense to me. First off, I remember disbelieving the 'God' story when I was four years old. I know the age because I remember the house we were in when I realized that this 'God' fellow making the universe out of some gas (I pictured a can like you fill a lawnmower from), and we moved from that house right before I turned five.

Yet I believed in Santa until I was nine or ten. Go figure, but Santa left tangible results: the oranges and apples and chocolate coins had to come from somewhere, and I don't think I credited my parents with the theatrical sense to fill stockings and pretend some elf did it. Ditto for the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. I think, too, that there was always the hope that Santa would come through with stuff my parents would not approve of, were to cheap to buy or otherwise would deny me.

Working in the graphic arts, I got a little tradition started a few years ago of leaving a note from Santa to the girls. My parents did this, trusting me not to recognize my Dad's handwriting. Frau Lobster goes as far as secretly disposing of leftover wrapping paper in 'Santa's' pattern so as to not leave a clue. My contribution is done with a font created to look hand-written, and I even tweak the point size of individual letters to mimic the variation in a person's hand. Click on the letter and you can see what I cooked up by way of Santa-Fraud this year.

Am I going to go to Hell for this or what?