THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412110057
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
There's something about the jolly old fellow that fascinates my 3-year-old daughter.
It's not the big white beard, or the fancy red outfit. Not the kindly words about being good or the candy he doles out.
She has figured out, with little to no help from me, that Santa brings you things. Things you want. Lots of things - in bright paper, to boot.
It's a likable idea - asking for what you want and getting it - so no wonder children cling to it, like just-licked candy canes to mittens.
Last year, my daughter could only utter a single word as she sat quaking on Santa's knee: ``Presents?'' I only needed to buy two to meet her criteria.
This year, she's a walking, talking wish list. I listened as she had a lengthy conversation with Santa, chatting away like an old friend.
``A doll with purple hair,'' she says. ``A purple guitar. A pair of purple shoes.'' (You can speculate on her favorite color.)
Afterward I told her Santa didn't make dolls with purple hair. She pointed one out in a store.
It made me realize I was no longer an innocent bystander in this whole Santa affair. I was becoming a player. Making him real. Defining him. And worse, using him for my own purposes. Today, I didn't want a doll with purple hair; tomorrow, I'd be threatening misbehavior with a stocking full of coal.
It's a question every parent faces. Are you fostering the magic of Christmas if you go along with the idea of Santa, or signing up as an undercover agent for Toys 'R Us? If you dash the idea, are you upholding truth, or carving your place in the next version of ``Mommy Dearest?''
I turned to my co-workers for help.
On one side, a friend waxes poetic about her childhood Santa. There was little mention of him until Christmas Eve when she'd receive a Western Union telegram from Santa, telling her she'd been good.
She'd go to bed that night in a house stripped of decoration, but the next morning she'd find elf dust on the window sill. Proof that the elves made one last check. Her father would carry her into the living room, where she'd find a Christmas wonderland, the tree decked, the house decorated, the gifts waiting to be unwrapped.
Her face still lights at the memory.
But on the other side of me the father of a 10-year-old girl says he has never lied to his daughter. He never went so far as to say Santa didn't exist, but he never said he did. He never labeled a gift ``From Santa'' or talked about the sound of reindeer hoofs on the rooftop.
That sense of integrity appeals to me as well.
So I fall in the middle ground.
I'm trying not to go overboard with Christmas, reminding my daughter about giving as well as the getting, reading stories about the real Christmas, trying not to threaten every whine with an empty stocking.
But I am letting Santa down the chimney. Maybe because of my own Christmas pasts. The things I got - the stockings, the candy, the toys - are just vague memories.
Yet I can almost still feel the chilly winter air that seeped through my footed pajamas as I bounded down the stairs straight to the plate of cookies I left for Santa. And the bowl of sugar that kept reindeer flying through the night.
They were always empty.
It was the magic of Santa, not the presents, that made the best memories. by CNB