Complicating the Mythos

As a parent, we try to give it straight to our four-year-old son. We explain to him about monsters and their unreality (except for gila monsters) and about dragons and their unreality (except for Komodo dragons). Of course, these exceptions prove the rule we’re trying to instill, and by prove, of course I mean it in the truest sense of the word: they test whether he can believe our assurances that the things we say don’t exist actually don’t exist.

Daddy, are guns real?
Yes.

Daddy, is Star Wars real?
Star Wars the movie is real, but the events and characters depicted in the story are not real.

You get the gist of our conversations and the hair-splitting things his father does to give him the full texture of the world and the many nuanced layers of reality.

As Christmas time rolls around, he’s starting to think of Santa as part of the narrative of Christmas. Younger children don’t get it, but by 4.5, he’s understanding that there might be something behind the red clad man. So he asks, inevitably,

Daddy, is Santa real?

Well, there’s a humdinger. Santa Claus is part of the mythology of childhood, part of Christmas that makes it magickal for the young and the young at heart. Although sometime in the coming Christmases, his sophistication will demand disbelief, but he could have a couple good years of putting out cookies for Santa and the struggle to stay awake to hear Santa on the roof. I mean, for crying out loud, we even have a fireplace, so he’s not trying to suss out how Santa Claus is coming into a small apartment in the housing projects whose sole sheet metal chimney leads right into the furnace. So I don’t want to blow it already with truth and reason, do I?

Secondly, there’s the vaccination thing. You know vaccinations are about keeping a population safe as much as about keeping an individual safe, right? If I tell the urchin that Santa does not exist, he will bring it up amongst his peers in preschool and Sunday School, injecting doubt into their celebrations. He’ll be Patient Zero in the loss of innocence. They might even fight over it, or at the very least point fingers and make those “Pkooh, pkooh” gun sounds that signal ostracization before they get cliques and Facebook accounts.

So I do what any overly analytical parent steeped in English degree obfuscation and essay exam extension techniques would do.

Saint Nicholas was real, but the Santa Clauses you see today are not the real Saint Nicholas but are rather earthly manifestations of his spirit, incarnations of him.

Great, now I’ve turned the jolly old elf into a sort of Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita, except instead of manifesting a many-headed and many-armed eater of men, Santa is a many-armed, many-headed, many-mall-dwelling dispenser of giftic justice. I’ve added an additional incarnation myth to muddy the birth of Jesus and its celebration. Most importantly, I’ve started the single lie that will lead to others. Is there one current incarnation of Santa, or many? Are the reindeer incarnation of the originals, or are they the immortal reindeer whereas Santas are mortal? What is the selection and succession process like?

Fortunately, something else caught his eye about then, and he asked about litter he saw outside his window, whether God liked the litter, and why man made litter but God didn’t and whether God made the houses under construction on our route. You know, the normal torrent of consciousness a child displays where the parent scrambles to keep up and to provide a chain of evidence and reasoning for everything in the world and some things that are not.

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2 thoughts on “Complicating the Mythos

  1. I remember asking my mom how Santa could possibly be at two malls at the same time. She explained that Santa hired assistants because he could not be everywhere at once, but since they were doing Santa’s work it was all the same. Kind of like 1099 contract workers who were authorized agents of Cringle, LLC, so it was all up-and-up.

    I thought it was great, in that I knew something other kids didn’t, but wasn’t about to tell any of them.

  2. I explained that Santa was a fun cartoon character, much like whatever his favorite was back then, that was invented to help us celebrate Christmas. I made sure to convey the fun and excitement of the Santa story and how much fun it is that everyone pretends he is real. . . because that makes it funny, too. We would even give each other some gifts from Santa and we’d all laugh together when opening presents. Oh boy! Santa! (Santa always gave socks and underwear.) That way, he could enter into the fun with other kids, and smugly keep his secrets to himself.

    He has always been about the inside joke. Even at two-and-a-half he was cracking wise about his pooh-bear being pooh-and-a-half years old.

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