The Christmas Lie

Like almost all children growing up in the Christian tradition, I was lied to as a child. My parents perpetrated an extensive and premeditated campaign of misinformation aimed at getting me to believe in something that did not exist. They went so far as to manufacture physical evidence, to collude with other parents to present erroneous facts with a straight face, even to threaten punishment if I were to collect data that might jeopardize the believability of their prevarication. At an age before I knew to be ever vigilant and to mistrust paternalism in all forms, my parents were using their near total power over my life and surroundings to inculcate a belief in something utterly false and, even more disturbingly, utterly unimportant.

I know now there is no Santa Claus.

But in early childhood, when this belief was still relatively intact, I reached the point in mental development where the world becomes not a place of magic and miracles, but a rule governed game, like chess or checkers. This slow transformation of the way that children perceive the world comes from many environmental factors. In my case Scooby Doo, with its scion of rationality in Velma, demonstrated time and time again that no matter how scary the monster, no matter how improbable the events, there was always a "logical explanation," while Shaggy and Scooby's (Zoinks!) belief in the supernatural was always exposed as folly. Other myths of childhood had evaporated before my eyes. The idea of storks delivering children, a notion I was never that vehement about but was certainly familiar with, exploded with the decidedly non-avian birth of my sister. As I learned the standard magic card tricks that would only excite wonder in sympathetic adults or gullible children, the familiar mantra that "it's just a trick, there is no magic" began to grow in credibility.

But somehow, the Santa myth seemed of a different order. Perhaps because he was somehow enmeshed in the solemn and serious Christmas holiday, or perhaps because Santa was portrayed as a puppet-master, controlling all-important material disbursement through an ambiguous moral system predicated on Orwellian observational techniques, Santa was someone who it was difficult to deny.

Even so, by the age of five the classical holiday commercials depicting Santa crawling down a chimney with a sack full of toys began to grate on my developing rationality. I enumerated a number of problems with the "Santa Hypothesis" ordered by degree of disquietude created: 1) The Logistical Problem: Too many houses existed to visit them all in one night. Counter-argument: Santa might have been able to slowdown or stop time. 2) The Production Problem: The availability of raw materials at the North Pole seemed fairly limited. Also, Santa Inc. did not seem like a viable business, what with all the pro bono work. Counter-argument: Santa could be the Rupert Murdoch cross Willie Wonka of toy sellers: a big-hearted tyrant tycoon with his own slave-race. 3) The Flying Reindeer Problem: Reindeer don't usually fly. Counter-Argument: The sleigh itself could run on some sort of solid fuel rocket that pushes the passive reindeer (rocket power being the only other possible means of movement other than whatever made the car go).

Sensing my mounting incredulity, and eager, like any parent, to prolong the length of their little boy's "innocence," my parents stooped to spectacular deceit on Christmas Day 1985. Having already safely planted the presents and consumed the milk and cookies, my parents procured a dollop of cotton from the medicine cabinet, and affixed this to a partially-ajar fireplace door. Catching sight of this bit of "evidence" the next morning, I was aghast. I approached the fireplace gingerly, treating the vicinity like a crime scene. I barely wanted to touch the cotton, for fear of disrupting the original confirmation of this landmark discovery. My parents suggested that Santa caught his coat on the way out, and a bit of the material was left here. I swallowed this explanation and wanted to dust the area for Santa's fingerprints.

The deception had the desired effect. I withheld judgement on the existence of Santa for another year, and my parents could revel in my naivete. But the next Christmas "Santa" gave my sister a toy that I remembered seeing before in our house. Either Santa was having an economically trying year and had helped himself to some of our older toys, or my parents had misled me all along. Learning the truth was a disappointment, but even more disturbing was the belittlement and the manipulation that previous "evidences" implied. The world had connived to pull one over on me, and that stung more than the cold transferal of my old toys to my sister. I vowed not to be bamboozled again.

As I grew older, existential questions regarding Santa turned to existential questions regarding God. Unsurprisingly, given these previous experiences, the invisible, omniscient, moralistic father figure (in the Christian tradition) found his place on the mental ash-heap, right next to the jolly fat man. Thus now I face the problem that many atheists feel during the holidays. While enjoying the time with family and the bonanza of material exchanges, the holiday is undeniably built on foundations that I reject. For me the holiday will always be tied to questioning, to the evaluation of evidence, both of Santa and God, but more generally the physical world. Luckily, a figure emblematic of just this sort of material exploration has a convenient date of birth. Sir Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642.

B.J. Greenleaf '01 is a physics concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.