Lily asked Santa for a Cinderella dress this year.
27 December 2007

Even before I had children — even before I was pregnant and children were just a longing hope in my  heart — I was looking forward to playing Santa with my kids.  I was looking forward to the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa… all the childhood magical fantasies.

My mom didn’t like the idea of Santa because of the materialistic aspect of that fantasy, so we always knew that Santa wasn’t real.  As I grew older, I felt cheated.  Everyone else had these magical childhood memories of Santa, and all I had was cold, impersonal reality.  So I told myself that I would let my children participate in the fantasy.

This year was the first year that Lily really understood who Santa was, so we really played it up.  We talked about him a lot, and we wrote him a letter.  And, as the season wore on, I became more and more disenchanted with this particular childhood illusion, for two very distinct reasons actually.

First, I constantly lied to my child.  I made an oath about six years ago to not lie.  When I made the oath, I thought it would be very easy to keep because I didn’t consider myself a liar.  Turns out, I lied all the time and it has been much harder to keep than I anticipated.  I lied to get out of social engagements; I lied so I wouldn’t hurt people’s feelings; I lied to get what I wanted.  I had no idea I lied as much as I did until I made that oath.  Try not lieing for a month or so… it’s quite hard.

Anyways, I lied up a storm during the month of December.  Lied lied lied to my precious daughter with whom I would like to only share truth.  So I’m having a real problem with that.

And secondly, just like my mom said, Santa is really materialistic.  I love the idea of Santa, but the actual practice is making me cringe.  In the Christmas movies, Santa is more than a shill for corporate America.  The movies are full of Christmas sentiment.  But, in actual practice, all that gets shoved aside, and we write our letters that say, “I would like x for Christmas.”  No love, no goodwill towards men, no charity… only “I want.”

Since this was my first year to work with the Santa mythos, we went the “I want” route, but that really didn’t work for me.  It went against every liberal lefty bone in my body.  Matt and I have to tweak Santa to fit him into our family’s value system.  I’m sure we can somehow make the magic of Santa fit into the magic of the Woodings household. 😉