Secret Santa

This post is not like a tutorial on what gifts to buy for your Secret Santa assignment. I’m having enough troubles coming up with my own. This is about the secret of Santa. (This is the part where you should stop reading if you are a believer.) I’ll give to to you straight:

Santa is not real.

“Gasp”, “My god”, *someone faints*.

As shocking as it might be, we all know that the fat man who sits with the scratchy plastic beard and the pillow under his way-too-big red jumpsuit is not actually Santa Claus. But then, who is? I think that it’s Saint Nicholas, a kind, giving man, but warped into the mascot for eating candy out of socks and drinking too much eggnog while watching all the corny ABC Family original Christmas “classics.” And then there is the question of “what time is the right time to break the news to your kids?” For some, like myself, it started at age 6, with me asking slow, meticulous questions, like “How does he get around to all of the houses in just one night?” and stuff like that, and then I finally asked the big question, fully ready to hear it. Or, you could be like my brother, who stood there all the while covering his ears and running out of the room, shouting “I don’t wanna hear it! LA LA LA LA!” Whichever you are, there is always a tipping point for kids like that, when they will finally be ready to hear the truth.

As for me, I don’t believe in Santa Claus, the commercial red suit that can make your dreams come true if you don’t yell at your mom for the month of December. I believe in Saint Nicholas, just a giving guy who wants to make kids happy. Or something like that.