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A Right Jolly Old Elf
December 08, 2003, 12:31 a.m. Around this time of year, everyone always gets so prickly about Santa. Fundies put up whacked out websites about how he’s Satan in disguise, teachers get fired for telling kiddies that he doesn’t exist, parents get hysterical about ‘keeping the magic in Christmas’, psychologists get hysterical about ‘lying to children’, and brats line up to demand laptops from some guy in cheap red suit. I was brought up with Santa, believing in him. I believed in him till I was about eight, despite wondering at why the Chinese kids in my class weren’t visited by him, why, if the elves made all his presents, they were also available for sale in the stores, and dealing with older kids, who, while not telling me straight out that he didn’t exist, admitted that they didn’t believe in him. We went the whole hog in my house – milk and cookies and carrots for Rudolf left out on Christmas Eve, stockings (well, festive pillow cases) hung from the end of the bed. The Christmas I found out he wasn’t real, my younger sister told me. We’d gone to Canberra for the extended family celebrations, and were staying in a rented house. The Brat and I came downstairs early on Christmas morning, and found our Santa presents in the pillow cases under the tree. While divesting our Santa Sacks of their goodies, my sister told me she’d found a list of toys, in my mother’s handwriting, and that it corresponded with what we’d gotten from ‘Santa’. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I still believed in him when I was eight. I think I’d accepted that he wasn’t real, but was willing to play along for the extra presents. Yes, I was a materialistic little brat. Still am : ) I also remember being mystified as to why my mother wouldn’t buy me a $50 stuffed cat toy from Grace Bros. once. Santa was fun. He was exciting and mysterious. He also meant I had something to keep me occupied from 5am to whenever my parents got up and finally got around to opening presents – an interminable length of time for a child, that, even at that age, cheesy Christmas cartoons can only go so far to fill. I think when the charade ended, I was more crestfallen about never getting any more Santa presents than any sense of betrayal about my parents lying to me. It was a lie, sure, but it wasn’t done out of malice – they’d wanted to give me that little bit extra, that little bit more. How come people never get this hysterical about the Tooth Fairy? I tried to keep the Santa tradition going after that, but it didn’t work. I was just too old for that anymore. And really, it had to end sometime, or else my parents would have gone broke. And really, what kind of sick 20 year old still gets Santa presents?
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