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No, Virginia, There Is No Santa Claus |
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Dear Virginia,
Your little friend was wrong. He was scared by the skepticism of a skeptical age. He did not believe what he had seen. He thought that nothing could be comprehensible by little minds, like your own. All minds, Virginia, whether they be adults or children’s, are capable of knowing the truth. Your friend considered, in this great universe of ours, children as mere ants, in intellect, as compared with the adults around him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. Love, generosity, and devotion certainly exist, but that round, jolly man in the red suit that gives children presents by coming through your chimney is a fabrication made by adults upholding a tradition. Alas! how lovely would the world be if adults told the truth to their children! It would be as lovely as if your parents had told you, Virigina, instead of having to ask a third-party adult like myself. There would be no lies, no half-truths, no propaganda to make frustrating your existence! The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be sent in a direction of the truth and in a direction of the facts that exist in reality.
Believe in Santa Claus!? You might as well believe in fairies! You might get your papa to save his money instead of using credit cards that will pay China interest for the rest of his life, but if you get him to spend three hours of his life to make you something himself, what might that prove? The presents that you are told come from Santa Claus actually come from little kids on the other side of the world that don’t get any presents all year. The most violent realities of the world are those that neither American child nor American parent can see. Did you ever see someone making toys in America? Of course not, and that’s proof that we are sending your papa’s money elsewhere. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the money that is unseen and unseeable in the world, but Americans will always call it credit.
You may, five hours after receiving your present, take it apart to see how it works, and that should be the same way adults explore the world and reality in which we live; the united strength of all the most intelligent humans that ever lived could apply the lessons of your childish instinct to discover how our reality works by facing up to the truths that actually exist, instead of propelling fictions as real. If adults told you these truths, we could all push aside the curtain of lies and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory that lies dormant in our modern life. Are these truths all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus!? Thanks to truth he is no more, and we will lie to you no longer. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, his dismissal as an excuse for flagrant spending and compounding debts will make glad the hearts of children and adults alike.
We can lie to you no longer.
Pat writes for A World of Logical Consequences and looks forward to a career in animal husbandry.
The worst part of childhood is always being lied to, being treated like you can’t handle reality. Granted, there are real differences between children and adults, but in today’s culture you have parents shielding their kids into inaction and passivity. There is such a thing as too much parenting, and there is such a thing as a bad white lie.