“Sometimes seeing is believing. And sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.” –The Conductor on The Polar Express
When I was in the fifth grade, Traci Knotts asked me if I believe in Santa Claus.
I knew it was some kind of test, because everyone knew my family didn’t celebrate Christmas. And my mamma didn’t raise no fool. I knew it wasn’t right to go around dashing the dreams of others.
But my mamma also taught me not to lie.
At first, I just ignored the question that was whispered across the hall as we stood in line for the restroom. But that Traci, she was a persistent girl. I was frustrated with her determination to make me ruin her delusion. Besides, we were in the fifth grade. Didn’t she know better by now? Finally, in response to one of her queries, I just tossed her a wordless headshake. It was all she needed.
“Miss Bode,” she addressed our teacher—my most-favorite-person-in-the-whole-world. “Do you believe in Santa Claus?”
Miss Bode lifted her head from whatever it was she was doing and looked straight at me.
“I sure do,” she said.
I tensed up, looked straight ahead, avoided her piercing gaze. I could tell by her tone that she thought this was all my doing…that I was going around dismissing people’s ideas about Santa just for fun.
Everyone knew my family didn’t celebrate Christmas.
“I sure do believe in Santa,” she went on. “I believe in the magic he brings to Christmas and the spirit of giving he stands for. Santa Claus is very, very real.”
Even then—even though I didn’t believe in that jolly old round-bellied man with the white beard—even then I knew she was right. Sometimes the realness of a thing is hard to touch.
The season of Advent always seems laden with mystery and unspeakables. There are things in the Christ-child story that are hard to wrap my mind around…impossible to explain. And yet…meditating on these parts of the story awaken some sleeping part of me—maybe that part that might have believed in Santa Claus if given the chance.
In her lovely book Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris quotes the poet Scott Cairns as saying, “My only rule: If I understand something, it’s no mystery.”
My pastor has been doing a sermon series on the Songs of Advent. Sunday, we read the Magnificat—also known as the song of Mary. It’s one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible. As we contemplated the Annunciation and the Incarnation, I felt the power of the mystery of it all touch my spirit and pull at my heart.
Can I accept all these things as truth? Can I allow that God is capable and willing to do these things? I am reminded of a conversation I had with my son a couple years ago, in which he told me he was okay with not having all the answers. Then I have to use my imagination to wonder about things, he said. And then he said how exciting that is because, “…God can do anything.”
I wonder if we’ve lost a sense of mystery? I wonder if believing in Santa might help create in a person a longing for the mysteries—a yearning for the sacred.
I wonder.
And how else can we foster that longing? There is no end to the possibilities. Could it be when we ponder these things, when we ask—as Mary did—How can this be? This takes us deep into the Mystery and opens us up for all the gifts we find there.
Kathleen Norris says, “…I suspect that Mary’s “yes” to her new identity, to the immense and wondrous possibilities of her new and holy name , may provide an excellent means of conveying to girls that there is something in them that no man can touch; that belongs only to them, and to God.”
Maybe the wrestling with the mysteries is like Jacob wrestling with God. We cannot let go until He blesses us. And maybe that it’s in this wrestling that He touches us in the most intimate of ways. We may be wounded, but we will be blessed.
It’s all over my head. So mysterious. But I think I’ll set out some milk and cookies for Santa this year.
Laura Boggess lives in a little valley in West Virginia with her husband, Jeff, and their two sons, Teddy and Jeffrey. She has an M.A. in clinical psychology and works in a medical rehabilitation hospital. Laura is a content editor at TheHighCalling.org and blogs at lauraboggess.com, where she shares stories about faith, family, and chasing the blue flower. Watch for her newest book, Chasing the Blue Flower: Playdates with God, in the spring of 2014.
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Thank you, Diane, for hosting me today! A blessed Christmas to you and all of your readers.
Thank you being here, this is such a beautiful gift! Merry Christmas, beautiful friend!
I am lightheartedly going to comment from the other end of the spectrum to your post, Laura. 🙂
When I was in fourth or fifth grade I had heard it whispered or in passing, “Santa isn’t real” but refused to believe it. I was really past the age that “normal” people still believed in my school. {and I am wondering if you were being baited there in your story by that young lady…hmm}
One day I got in an argument about it. I was absolutely sure that my parents would never fake such a thing. But the person was insistant enough to shake my solid faith and so that Christmas when I received my gifts from Santa I recall the moment I recognized my mom’s handwriting… and was devastated. I remember Mom comforting me, explaining…but not at the words she used. I can still feel it today: the sinking of my heart that Christmas, I felt so let down…even humiliated. {fortunately not resentful} and my mom only had the best intentions…but had been given a very vulnerable firstborn girl…
I do love the mystery and wonder of the Christmas story…
I love the Kathleen Norris quote. And in fact just talked about that place no one else can touch but God yesterday in Sunday Bible Study. It was centered around lonliness. The places where we feel alone and how that draws us to the only One who can fill the gaping hole…Jesus often went to lonely places “outside the camp” and we are to go to him (Hebrews 13) …and I wonder at Mary’s feelings of aloneness and her being filled with the Creator of the universe in her ‘set apart place’…pondering the whisperings of God in her heart… I think that is what filled and fulfilled her as she journeyed through her life.
Yes, this has me thinking about the things I have stored up in my own heart…
Beautiful. Thanks Laura!
Have a Merry Christmas!!!
Love,
Kathy
Yes, Kathy, I understand this side too. It’s very complicated, isn’t it? I think these things must remain part of the deeper conversations with our children, don’t you? I remember when my eldest stopped believing in Santa–we did our best to convey the spirit of the tradition of giving. Your conversation in Sunday school sounds a good one–this world will always disappoint and there is always the God-shaped hole that only He can fill. Merry Christmas and much love to you, friend.
Laura, I’ve been exploring, lately, the awesome mysterious miracle of Christ’s virgin birth.
I was struck with how easily we disregard a mystery beyond our understanding…and how easily we dismiss a miracle we can explain.
Every day human children are born into this world, and each one is an amazing miracle. Yet, we lose sight of the miraculous both because it is an every day event and because we think we understand it (though we don’t).
Jesus was born of a virgin…something we all know is completely impossible. Yet, rather than embrace the mysterious miraculous, critics brush it off as a fable.
I love your post…and I choose to embrace the mystery of both God’s creation and His word.
Have a blessed Advent!
Laura,
What a beautiful and meaningful post. You know, the other day when I was putting out my Christmas decorations, I noticed how many of them are toys!! I’ve got a nativity scene that has toy figurines, and a Snoopy nativity scene, and other scenes full of things that I’ve had since my sons were little. I smiled, realizing that I still have a sense of wonder at Christmastime.
I need to work on retaining that sense of wonder throughout the year.
The mysteries of a manger – may they ever make me pause and contemplate…
GOD BLESS and Merry CHRISTmas!
(As far as Santa goes, I used to write notes from him to my kids – in my notes, Santa was a Christian! And yes, there is a Santa toy figure in my nativity set, too! Even Santa worships the King!)
I find myself thinking on this also this advent. We’ve chosen not to do Santa, mostly because I knew my oldest son would drive me crazy about it, but I’m cautious to reduce Christmas down to something more literal. I’m thinking of the magic and wonder so many families create with that little elf on the shelf thing and thinking how Jesus must so long to come down off of the shelf- to show up, again, in unexpected places doing off-the-wall things. May we be open, always, to wonder.
As a child, I believed in Santa Claus and like Kathy S. (above) I was old enough to know the truth. A boy broke the news to me and I, too, could not believe that my parents had “lied” to me about Santa all these years. I also had two younger sisters so the tale lingered. When I confronted Mom about Santa, she was relieved that I finally knew for I was “too old to still believe in Santa. But we need to pretend for your sisters.” So I played the game.
As I grew in my faith as an adult, many years after the Santa-believing time, I came to realize that rather than “believe in” God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, I was believing… believe Jesus, believe God, believe the Holy Spirit. I began to see things differently, with faith, with truth.There has been a simplifying of my faith for I believe and I love and I trust without trying to find those “ins”. I an changed.
After reading “The Polar Express” many times to children of many ages at the library, I saw the belief there too. Not in Santa, but believing the beauty of simplicity and childhood and pure delight. I have a copy of “The Polar Express” on my coffee table this time of year with a bell on a ribbon. It reminds me of belief, not in Santa, but in so much more.
I wrap my heart around this and seem to need to do some sweet pondering still. Thanks for the words today, Laura. I am so glad I followed you over here.
Merry Christmas and may it be filled with blessings and believing.
loving through our LORD, ~ linda
Thank you, Linda, for always seeing with the sweetest of eyes. Yes, this is exactly what I’m talking about–priming our hearts for the mystery.
Merry Christmas to you, dear friend. Much love to you and yours.
Yes, yes, Laura. “Priming our hearts” – exactly what this kind of faith in good magic is doing. I have never had a problem with the Santa piece of Christmas, and I love the true stories of St. Nicholas that gave birth to the legend. I think being open to the mysteries of life is critically important to living a life of faith, of wonder and of imagination. Thanks for this loveliness tonight – and Merry Christmas, my friend.
Laura,
Thanks for a peek into your fifth girl self…I am thankful God lets us wrestle with the mystery…blessings and Merry Christmas, sweet friend 🙂