Magic

Trends are usually things that don't actually conjure up emotions for me. Sometimes I follow them sometimes I don't but they certainly don't get under my skin and make me take a stance. Yesterday I read about a trend that infuriated me. One that I think messes with childhood magic and family tradition. The NO SANTA trend. Many people just starting their families are making a conscious effort to raise their children without the Santa Claus story. Without the traditions of the chimney and the reindeer and the stockings hung on the fireplace. They are choosing to tell their children Santa is a fake made-up story and the only real story is the one of Jesus. I take offense at this. I certainly would never tell someone who believes in the story in the bible about how Christmas came to be that it was a fake. I think the two are very different, very separate stories. One does not make the other smaller or less significant.

To me Santa is a gateway to all the things that are sweet and innocent about childhood. Letting your child believe in something that they can't make logical sense of fosters their imagination. I for one want my children to have faith in things that might be. I want them to feel the tradition that I felt as a kid. I want them to simply be children. To believe, sight unseen. It only lasts for such a short time and stripping Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy from them could be as detrimental as any other childhood trauma that causes them to lose their innocence. I don't remember the exact day I found out Santa wasn't real so it must not have caused too much pain. As a matter of fact there is a little piece of me that still believes in the fantastic magic of Santa because he encompasses the spirit of Christmas....and after all that is the spirit that parenting is all about.