The Santa Lie

It all starts with the first great lie, Santa Claus.

We have lost faith. We do not know whom to believe. We do not know whom to trust. Our parents, our ministers, our teachers, our politicians, our lovers, our car dealers, our anchorman--who among us is worthy of our trust?

And it's all because of Santa Claus.

Who can't remember when they first realized there was no Santa Claus?

For me, it was when I discovered a secret cache of gifts in a closet. I carefully unwrapped the end flaps on one, read the lettering on the side of the box and re-taped the package. On Christmas morning the card on this same box said it was from Santa Claus. How could Santa have brought this from the North Pole just hours earlier? And if there was no Santa, who was devising this elaborate hoax, who was drinking the milk and eating the carrots I left out for the reindeer? Who was leaving me thank you notes written in a feathery Santa hand?

My parents? My own parents were doing this to me? The same people who had selected my religion, mandated my moral values and set our standard of ethics?

Herein lies the crux. In our formative years, two similar controlling factors are presented to us, God and Claus. They both see you when you're sleeping, know when you're awake, know if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake. They both reward you for faith and sterling behavior, and punish you for lack of both, one with fire, brimstone and eternal damnation and the other with a mini-version of the same thing, a lump of coal. When Claus is revealed as a fraud, can God be far behind?

Some of us desperately need to believe in something. I dealt with the loss of Claus. But I clung to the big Santa in the sky. When I became a parent, I decided not to tempt my own child with a similar crisis of faith. I would make life easy for him. I would tell him upfront there was no Santa Claus. I explained very carefully, or maybe very vaguely, it was just a Christmas game. I met direct questions about Santa head-on. Is there a Santa Claus? There are lots of Santa Clauses, Santa Clauses in every mall.

Unfortunately, in the end, it didn’t work. Whereas I continued to cling to the Santa in the sky with diamonds, he rejected everything I believed in. Did it all stem from the original loss of Claus, even as careful as I was to prepare him for it?

The Santa Claus conspiracy is the first conundrum we encounter on a lifetime journey of losing faith, and that's the only thing in life you can trust, the true and certain knowledge that you can’t believe in anything.

(I originally wrote a longer version of this about 15 years ago, and ever since, I keep seeing it floating around on the Internet, usually attributed to The City Paper, which never bought it from me, so I hereby lay formal claim to my own essay.)