Must There Be a Santa?

There comes a time when…you don’t believe.

It happens to everyone. For some it’s at the very beginning. They never even get the chance; someone made the decision for them. For most it’s later. They think they grow too old, too smart, or simply outgrow the idea.

And I’m not talking about Santa.

So what’s the need for Santa?

Marty was at that point. Santa was presents, of course, he was the very symbol of the holiday, he was the jolly fat man with the reindeer and the impossible task of visiting…everyone, on a single night. But never caught in the act. That was one of the central tenets. If you saw him it was your dad, your mom. Or some guy at the mall, ringing a bell. The real Santa?

That was an act of belief. That was how Marty understood it. Until he didn’t. He started making his own lists, the way these things go, and gradually realized the gifts he found under the tree…didn’t match. So it was your basic disappointment.

This year was going to be different. He’d been obsessing about it all year. It was the running dialogue in his head, the thing he told no one about. Santa wasn’t something you talked about with friends anyway. He wasn’t even something you talked about with mom and dad, not after those first few years, anyway.

No, he was a private matter, something you thought about late at night. Well, if you were Marty, anyway.

For Marty it was a kind of torture. He didn’t need Santa to know there would be presents under the tree. He needed Santa for…What? That was the crucial question.

He was old enough to know what Christmas was all about. He’d seen a few versions of the Dickens story at this point. Good will toward men. Whatever that meant. Being…happy.

But Marty wasn’t happy. He needed to figure out Santa.

If you take away the proposition that Santa exists to deliver presents, what does that leave? Must there be a Santa?

His dad must’ve heard him stirring, because he stuck his head in Marty’s room. Marty pretended to be asleep, but his dad knew.

“Hey, kid,” his dad said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried,” Marty said.

“Oh, I’m not talking about gifts,” his dad said.

“I know,” Marty said.

“So what it?” his dad said.

“I don’t understand Santa Claus,” Marty said. “What’s the point?”

“Well, you know the story,” his dad said. “Saint Nick.”

“Yeah,” Marty said.

“Then you know what Santa is about,” his dad said.

“Well, no,” Marty said.

“Okay,” his dad said. “Not so easy. Okay. Let’s see. You want to know why bother with him. Why you ever needed to believe. Well. That’s…that’s a big one. Sure you don’t want to sleep on it?”

“Sure,” Marty said.

“Sure you don’t want Mom to handle this one?” his dad said.

“If she needs to,” Marty said.

“No!” his dad said. “I mean, it’s okay! I can handle this…He’s kind of the spirit…You know what that is, right?”

“Yeah,” Marty said.

“He’s the spirit of the thing,” his dad said. “Not like…a mascot. Angel. He’s like an angel. Hark! And all that…Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Maybe?” Marty said.

“Saint Nick,” his dad said, “And then…Well, Christmas as we know it is kind of…a pretty recent invention, really. We imagine Santa to be very old, but in…ah…relative terms? He’s actually quite young. But that would be…weird. A young Santa would be weird, but kind of cool, if you thought about it…No, he looks the way we imagine him to look. He’s not an idea…Don’t get me wrong.”

“He could be an idea,” Marty said.

“Sure,” his dad said, “but he’s not. Some ideas are too real to be imaginary. You know what? Never mind, that’s…a little much. What I mean is, he’s the version of the story that makes the most sense to us, so that’s…that’s why he exists. Maybe in another hundred, two hundred years there’ll be a different need, and…Santa will get to relax…Now? He makes his visits…to bless us. You know, like the Ghost of Christmas Present. That’s…ah, the real gift. Not what’s under the tree. Do you understand?”

“I guess,” Marty said.

“Listen,” his dad says, “give me a hug.”

“Sure,” Marty said.

It took him forever to fall asleep. But he wasn’t anxious. He thought maybe he really had understood. 

Voice of God...

In the beginning...

She didn't speak of it.  She never spoke of it.  She couldn't...

The day that changed everything, that changed humanity forever, right from the beginning, when Eve spoke with the serpent, who convinced her to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she was shown...everything.

She felt instant shame.  That was what God had wanted her, and Adam, and humanity, to avoid.  To remain eternally...innocent.  Innocent wasn't the same as pure.  Innocent meant to be free of the burden.  The serpent had attempted to be cunning, to convince her that God had meant to coddle them, to keep them docile.  But Eve had lived in Eden.  She had seen everything there was to see.  She simply hadn't understood...

He had shown her everything.  In fact, in his pride he really had...and it had nearly overwhelmed her.  He had shown her everything possible.  He had shown her...everything.  What had so blinded the serpent was that it had seen everything, too, and it hadn't understood.  It had blinded itself, perhaps, or perhaps it had been incapable of such comprehension, such things.  She had, though.  Oh.  

She had been second.  For a very brief moment, Adam had been alone, and then God had decided there should be more, that Adam needed a companion, and so he had drawn Eve from out of him, and...Without the serpent, perhaps, even then, humanity would have run its course.  The serpent showed Eve such a potential, and perhaps, in all the possibilities, it had shown her lies, because, of course, all possibilities are lies, and the serpent didn't know that, had believed its imagination spoke truth, and that was a kind of truth, if it had imagined with wisdom, so of course it had not.  Only what happened was true, and only one course was true, and in its folly, the serpent had shown Eve not only possibilities, but the future, the one true course, and it had shown her...

A manger, and a man and a woman, somewhere down the course of history, what, in the beginning, would have seemed magic, impossible, what to God was simply another quirk of existence, what to the serpent was folly, and to Eve, capable of being grasped, at least for a moment, a fleeting glimpse, and a baby...

What child was this?  

Later, Eve very much wanted to explain all of this to Adam.  Surely not in the moment, not when Adam felt shame, not when God spoke to them, banished them from the garden, when they had lost all their innocence...

And what was that?  What was this thing they now had to fill their days attempting to contend with, to understand?  

The knowledge that they had to worry about consequences...That they could choose to ignore them, to be crippled by them, or to use them as guideposts...And who was that child?  God, as Adam never failed to remind them, was no longer a step away.  He was an eternity.  They were cut off forever.  Or, perhaps, not.  Eve, in the very back of her mind, saw the thread.  She saw her children, she saw the murder, she saw the communities of mankind, she saw the struggles forward, the denials, the betrayals, the...hope.  Not for what they would someday have again, if they were good.  What they might have, if they chose to do good, what it might mean in their everyday life.  

It wouldn't be easy.  They would certainly need guideposts.  In her moment of weakness, Eve had already proven that.  Too easy to be led astray.  But her moment of weakness had shown her, as would always be true, what strength could look like.  

The child she saw was God, and the clarity that what they'd lost...They could reclaim.  Not like before.  They would have to rely on...faith.  Not faith to make their lives better, as if through magic.  Faith, so that they could navigate the guideposts, make the right choices.  Had she made the wrong one?  God had already seen it.  He had seen everything.  The child had already been born, since He was God, and even before His birth had been in existence...And Eve had seen that, too.  She had seen Evil, and she had, surely, seen Good...Evil, the chance to use her thoughts for selfish reasons, Good the chance to...

In the days after the expulsion, she kept all these things to herself.  Adam forgave her, and they made a family, and in the years that followed, when they had understood death, she wondered about...pride.  If she would be...remembered.  If she would be condemned, if she would be understood...

She supposed it didn't matter.  She had glimpsed a new beginning, somewhere very close to the beginning, and also very much in the middle of a drop in the vast expanse of eternity...A light in the darkness.

The Colorado Kid’s Haven

“Cos not.”

Of course not.

Most of the other times Marty spoke he would’ve elaborated in his calm, almost academic manner, at length, and that would’ve been that, but on this occasion…he just didn’t have the patience to get into it. There was just too much, and it wouldn’t have been near as simple as when he’d explained why he no longer shot squirrels (surely his best, simplest story), and…this one was really for him, and that was kind of the point.

He was a widow, now, and these things were important. The years weren’t advancing anymore, they were in retreat. Some things you kept to yourself. When you’re very young, nothing’s yours. Then you get a few years, and you almost live for the idea. Put a decade or two under your belt and most people forget…But you remember, late.

And so he remembered, for himself.

A great many years ago when he’d been one of those kids, when his folks had taken him on a vacation somewhere off the coast, on an island, where a lot of Mainers thought the real life of the state existed, and most vacationers, at that, he’d made a friend. 

A somewhat long story short, later he discovered his friend, who had also been on vacation, but from way out in Colorado, had had a son, who was very happy with his life, except his dad had died, a phone call happened, and that’d changed everything.

This man sounded nervous. They didn’t know each other, the man had never heard his dad talking about Marty, had only discovered his existence in an old scrapbook, which featured a picture of the two, Marty’s name, and the name of the island that had improbably introduced them. The man had done some digging, and while Marty himself and few enough of his acquaintances thought of him in relation to a job, that’s how the man found him. And arranged to meet, on that island. Or near-abouts.

He had clearly been nervous. He’d never done anything like this before. He had a wife and a newborn son…But he didn’t talk much about them. He just wanted to reconnect with his dad…or the closest he could. Which would be Marty.

Marty arranged everything. The man showed up hungry, practically twitching. As it happened Marty had a friend who lived on the island, who agreed to let them stay at his home (this was decades before anyone had thought of airbnbs, mind you), and that’s where Marty prepared the steak, but the man, being so nervous, had insisted on eating at a diner, and so the steaks cooled in a refrigerator, and Marty and the man had fish and chips. 

The man showed Marty a pack of cigarettes he thought Marty might enjoy, but Marty hadn’t smoked in decades. Played around with one to be polite, set it aside when it only made things more awkward. The man showed Marty a coin that had belonged to his dad, just some silly knickknack…

And it ended badly. They moved things to the house, and the man, late at night, went trudging through its dark interior, and Marty listened as first the fridge door opened and then the front door…

And then later, when he was back home, in that lonely place where his kids were all grown and his wife’s side of the bed was cool…he learned that the man had choked to death.

There are things you can’t explain. Did Marty feel a twinge of guilt, as if he’d abandoned the man during some midlife crisis? Cos he did. But these are the things you keep to yourself.

Cos they are. That’s life.

He wasn’t about to have a whole conversation about any of that. He moved on to some other topic. Most of life was like that. Some things anyone can find out. He gave that man’s wife better peace not explaining any of this. Her and everyone else. A kind of safe haven. Even if the mystery of it seemed otherwise.