JENN MCKINLAY: When I was about seven years old, I remember cornering my dad and asking him point blank. "Is Santa Claus real?"
We were standing in his studio (Pop was an artist) and he cupped his chin and pondered my questions while I quivered in anticipation of his answer. My friends told me Santa was fake, but the dewy eyed child inside of me wanted to believe in magic and kept the story of the "right jolly old elf" clutched in her pudgy little hand. Finally, after what seemed like days in child time but was mere seconds in adult time, my dad met my gaze and said, "If you don't believe, you don't receive."
I was rocked back on my heels. Had Pop just given me the secret? Did the kids who didn't believe stop receiving and that's why they thought they were right? Hallelujah! I hugged him tight and assured him that I most definitely did believe.
Fast forward twenty-eight years when I had my own dewy eyed little hooligans and I'm a guest at a wedding right before the holidays, sitting with a bunch of moms discussing holiday stuff. One mom addresses the group of us and declares that if you LIE to your child about Santa, you're breaking trust with them, they'll never believe you about anything, you're a terrible mother, and your children will abandon you to your throne of lies once they grow up. If her goal was to end the conversation between moms, she did a bang up job. I don't think any of us made eye contact after that judgement grenade and we all quickly scuttled off to find our spouses.
See, here's the thing with Hub and me. We fairy-taled the shizzle out of the boys' childhoods. Not only did we keep the Santa myth going until they were 9 and 10 respectively, no small achievement with the internet and whatnot, but we made up tall tales about everything.
When they came with me to the post office to mail packages, I told them the postal workers attached wings to the boxes and launched them. Then we stood in the parking lot, checking the skies for our packages winging their way to wherever. People thought we were deranged. Hilarious! Hub's classic was to tell the boys we adopted them from monkey island at the Phoenix Zoo but we had to remove their tails so they could leave. Those boys spent a lot of time checking their backsides to see if their tails were growing back. We also told them the piped in music at the grocery store was for people to dance while they shopped and then we had "dance breaks" in the middle of the aisle. And that's just a few of the more memorable ones. Good times!
We never discussed or planned the whoppers we told our kids. It came to us in the moment and we went with it. We both believed that the magic of being a kid and the joy of childhood should be encouraged in every possible way even if it meant...fibbing.
I don't know what happened to that mama or what her relationship with her kids is. I hope it's what she wanted. But I do know that Hub and I are besties with the Hooligans and I like to think it's because they appreciate that we worked really hard to make their childhood something special.
How about you, Reds and Readers? Where do you stand on the magic of believing versus the brutal truth at all times? Did your family have any particular tall tales that you remember fondly?
