The Macabre Bleakness Of The Santa “Magic” Line

As you know (oh yeah! still beating that dead horse!) one of the most frequent arguments in favor of the Santa Lie–and one that drives me singularly batty–is the idea that the Santa Lie creates “whimsy” or “magic” in kids’ life.

Part of why it drives me batty is because it’s so self-evidently absurd–kids get plenty of whimsy and magic out of regular old stories, but you never see kids playing at Santa, precisely because it hasn’t been delivered as a story (which frees kids to play with it, reimagine it, reenact it, and so on), but as a lie.

Part of why it drives me batty is because it’s almost always followed up with the accusation that anyone who would object is therefore a “Grinch” who is Grinchy and Grinch bad. Grinch.

But it recently struck me just how bleak this whole worldview is. Because implicit in the argument is the idea that the world as it is is so bereft of wonder that the only way you can introduce it is by making it up out of whole cloth.

Man, that is a dark, dark world that Santa-Lyin’ parents live in. If I lived there, I might want to make up reassuring fictions. I might drink more, too.

Here’s how a Facebook interlocutor put it recently: “I gave my kids Santa because I want them to have a world with some magic in it, even if it’s temporary and fake. [. . .] There’s plenty of time for disillusionment later.”

Get that? The world is so gloomy, barren and disenchanted that it’s better to have some wonder and then have it ripped from you than to never have it at all.

But see, here’s the thing: the world is already magic. It is so full of wonderful, amazing things. The entire natural world is a ceaseless theophany, endlessly and graciously given to us from infinity. Every single human being is a literally infinite wellspring of wonder and complexity. There is infinite art, infinite books, infinite food, infinite stories, infinite beauty out there… And then there is the Bible, prayer, the lives of the saints, meditation, works of mercy… I am reminded of Louis CK’s line that “you don’t get to be bored.”

No wonder I don’t need Santa. I live in a world of magic and wonder every minute of every day.

And I’m the one who gets called a grinch.