Skip to content


I love Christmas so much that I secrete Santa

According to Co-worker, kids these days stop believing in Santa Claus around the age of 6. “If they still think Santa Claus is real beyond 6, they’re too naive for this cynical world and destined for a lifetime of pain,” he opines.

Before I can make a pun on “naivity” and “nativity” that would certainly go underappreciated, Co-worker further claims that most young children suspect that Santa Claus is a made-up character akin to Peter Pan and Mickey Mouse, but choose to play along with the Santa myth for their own material gain. “That’s what I did,” he says. “I sensed that if I stopped squealing about ‘what will Santa Claus and the reindeer bring me’, people would stop buying me so many presents, because it’s not as rewarding to buy presents for a kid who doesn’t believe in Santa. So I played along until I was 11, and then my father was so concerned that he outright told me ‘Hey, there is no Santa. Stop it.'”

“I was so gullible,” I say. “Even when all evidence pointed to Santa’s nonexistence, I still believed. Even when my older siblings told me the truth, I thought they were lying.”

Co-worker makes a face. “But you didn’t really believe,” he insists. “You didn’t think that there was a magical man who lived on the North Pole and delivered toys to all the children in the world via a reindeer-pulled sleigh over the course of a single night. You just wanted to believe.”

“No, um, I really did believe,” I insist. “Maybe I didn’t understand why anyone would make up such a thing. Or I reasoned that if Santa Claus didn’t exist, someone should invent him.”

Co-worker, aghast, refuses to believe that I really believed. A few hours later, he forwards me a Reuters article in which a scientist uses modern theorem to explain how Santa Claus –wink, wink — accomplishes his renowned gift-delivering feats. I guess it was written as a service to parents who want to bolster their precocious 6-year old’s belief in Santa Claus, because not many 6-year olds can refute the space-time continuum and nanotechonology.

Posted in Nostalgia.

Tagged with .