the santa factor

My husband and I are completely enthralled with our grandchildren’s excitement for Santa Claus. We listen as our son reports how most parenting moments from October forward hinge upon the concept of Santa’s watchful eye. We remember this well.
 
And then…we discussed our own young experience of Santa. We determined our first solid memories of this central figure were from around age four and the heartbreaking information that it was all a myth carried out by our parents arrived somewhere around age 10. That means our solid Santa years total about seven holidays. Seven daily countdowns in December. Seven carefully constructed gift lists. Seven platters of cookies and milk on the counter. Seven completely sleepless Christmas Eves.  
 
Not only did our parents carefully construct a space for us to believe in and enjoy the Santa years – the entire world, our neighbors, teachers, television shows, and even department stores – all supported that belief. 
 
But…my husband and I now respectively claim 64 and 54 Christmases on the books. Only those faraway seven offer this magical element of the world-travelling toy giver and his flying reindeer. That leaves the actual Santa experience percentage very low, but the memories and the impact of that wonderful myth are incredibly deep. Santa, that guy, still kind of shows up every year in our thoughts and our concept of the holidays.
 
Do you see where I am going with this? 
 
If we could put Santa aside for a minute and just consider that when a message, a theory, a story, is repeated and upheld all around you, especially as a child, it simply becomes true and real, even when it is not.
 
We do not need to wipe the Santa story from our brains. But some others? Well, maybe this is a good time to look back and review other messages that are not so wonderful, also outdated, and still play a role in our belief system. It would be the perfect year-end gift to offload a few of those, wouldn’t it?