Christmas story 1998

Well, today was the day. Today was the day my daughter found out there's no Santa Claus. You know, you just wait for the day to arrive. It's one of those milestones that's so sure to happen to you that you just count them as already determined. Loss of virginity, first time drunk, your parents' deaths, and the moment your child stops believing in Santa Claus. Yeah, alright. I'm upset, okay? Fine. You know, I wish the world had told me more of what it was really like to be a parent before I had actually become one. It's so easy to get the obvious examples: It's a big responsibility, they're a bundle of joy, sometimes they pee on you while you're changing their diaper. But let me lay a little truth on you that you might have not heard before. Sometimes, when they're still newborns, there's certain moments when you just absolutely hate that you had a child. It's not a bundle of joy, it's eight hours of nightmare. Now, the feeling passes and eventually I discovered it's just all a normal part of suddenly coping with having a child in the world...I just wish someone had told me that ahead of time so I wouldn't have freaked out when it did happen. And another little truth I found out is that once you have a child, and once you hold that child in your hands, you are suddenly overwhelmed with an obsession for protecting that child. My daughter and I will watch TV on the couch sometimes and she'll fall asleep, and all I'll want to do is cover her entire body with mine, protect her from the falling missiles and random gunshots and windowless vans. It is in these moments that I realize that I would gladly trade any and all parts of my life away in order to keep my daughter from harm. And the moments when you can't be with her and she does end up getting hurt...the pain can be all-consuming sometimes.

When I was younger I used to debate the entire idea of raising my child with a faith in Santa Claus. When I was younger, kids were a hypothetical party game for wicked discussion around the bar table: Would you homeschool your kids? Would you raise them as atheists? What's the proper age to talk to them about sex and drugs? Would you teach them to believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? I used to get a great thrill when I thought of my child being the freaky, cyncial one in her first-grade class, the one who would be the big introverted nerd all through school and a multimillionaire by age thirty. "Lisa, what's Santa Claus bringing you this year?" "My daddy says that Santa Claus is a fictional character created by lazy, consumerist parents." Right on, fight the power, little sister!

Then, of course, I had the child. And one look into my daughter's eyes and I was saying, "Of course I'm going to raise her to believe in Santa Claus! What was I thinking?" and you know why? Because one look into your daughter's eyes shows you a human who believes in everything. Has faith in everything. Is cynical and jaded and disillusioned about nothing. And do you want to be the one to shatter that faith? No. Why? Because you're her father and you will do everything in your power to keep her from ever getting hurt. The obsession becomes so great that you don't even want your daughter to ever learn the truth about Santa Claus, as stupid and insane as that sounds. This is also something that I never heard about before I became a parent, this whole idea that the moment your child stops believing in Santa Claus is the moment you start thinking of all the other things you won't be able to control later in life: "What if she starts doing drugs? What if she gets pregnant at 16? What if she can never get a job? What if she gets in a car accident? What if she gets a divorce at 27?" And the pain of all these injuries to your child is so overwhelming you just wish you could die.

I tried every trick in the book, all the ones I had collected over the years in anticipation of this moment: "He's actually Santa's helper because Santa's busy making the toys right now." "Santa had to come by early this year because he's so busy, so Mom and I were just hiding the toys in the basement for him." But my daughter just shook her head and said in a tiny, high-pitched, fake British accent, "Oh, fatha," before bursting into laughter. This is the joke she's learned from a recent viewing of My Fair Lady which she is now utilizing every chance she gets. Despite what I said, she does maintain a little of the freakiness I wished for in my youth.

The presents this year are labelled "From Mom and Dad." Well, except for one. It's the "must-have" gift this year, the one our daughter was hiding notes for all over the house, for the last month and a half. Under my pillow and in my computer bag and even inside my wallet. If she was five years younger I suppose it'd be the new hot trendy doll, the Cabbage-Furby-Barbie-Teddy with the newest technological innovation. Five years from now it'll probably be for a car or a new stereo or God knows whatever new expensive toy they can create by then. But she happens to be the age where the gift to get this year is a children's laptop computer. You should see this thing. It's made of shatterproof plastic, comes in designer colors, runs a Windows mini-operating system like the one they make for palm computers, and it comes with a printer and a 33.6 modem. Three hundred dollars! I almost bought another one for my own use!

This one is labelled From Santa. We are hoping to start a new family tradition this year, where each Christmas all of us, herself included, pick the one gift we're giving that means the most to us, that is the most heartfelt gift, and label it "From Santa" with a wink and a nod. We're hoping to teach our daughter that Santa Claus can symbolically stand for the act of caring. Of giving. Of forgiving. The happiness felt from taking on a difficult responsibility, then eventually succeeding at it. We figure as long as she now has to take on the burden of "adult knowledge," "the original sin," she deserves to reap some of its rewards. We have taken that first official step towards guiding our daughter from a child to an adult.

Will it work? Beats me. It was the best we could come up with at the spur of the moment. I do like to think, though, of my daugher as a full adult, sometime way out there in the future, probably after I'm dead. Career of her own, a fine house, a loving family. And she will be wrapping that one gift to her husband labelled "From Santa" and she will suddenly think back to when she was in our care. A sudden rush of nostalgia will overcome her, a feeling of warmth travelling from the bottom of her toes upward. She will feel warm and safe and a little sad but mostly very, very happy. And suddenly, for the rest of my life and even long after I'm gone, for one moment a year I will have my body wrapped around my daughter, protecting her from the missiles. And the guns. And the windowless vans.

Copyright 1998, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved.