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Santa ! D E S O P X E
Who’s laughing now, fat man!? by David Templeton
“I
’m ready to talk about Santa Claus!” Cla aus!” says Amy Ahlers. “But let me go into my offi office ce and close the do door, because my 4-year-old is in the house—and ho she’s a big fan of Santa.” Amy Ahlers, Ah often described with the moniker monik The Wake-Up Call Coach, is the t author of Big Fat Lies Women Te Tell Themselves (New World Library, 20 2011), a self-help guide designed siigned to assist ass woman as they swap those destructive destruc critical thoughts for a life-affirming rmin superstar attitude. I’ve called her up this t morning to ask about the moment sh she stopped believing in Santa Sant ntta Claus. Over the last seve several years, usually around Christmastime, I’ve b been collecting stories about loss-of o -faith moment experienced by that first loss-of-faith miilllions off kids k ds every ki eve year. In Western culture, millions S where the Santa story has become inte integral to the mainstream cell celebration of Christmas and wn wi wintertime, it seems that for eve new child introduced to every m the magic of Santa Claus, encourag to write letters and leave couraged hum who will one day put cookies out for him, there is a small human
two and two together and have to deal with the fact that the world may not be quite as magical as he once thought. For many, it is a development a painful but useful major passage in their cognitive development, step toward adulthood. Most of us make the transition without any traceable trauma. Every so often, though, that moment when Santa is finally revealed to be an elaborately choreographed game, a lovely and sweet-spirited act of imagination designed to prolong a sense of innocence and wonder and to encourage generosity, is remembered as the first real stab of disillusionment we are forced to experience. Ironically, for many of us, that memory of the moment we first learned the truth about Santa is among our favorites, a tender recollection of when we were young enough to believe a man could fly with reindeer and travel the world in a single night. For others, of course, it was the moment we learned that adults don’t always tell the truth. “I have an older sister, who’s a couple of years older me,” recalls Ahlers. “And when I later found out that she already knew that Santa wasn’t real, it was incredibly upsetting. Because I had this story I told everyone, where I said that I went to the bathroom one Christmas Eve, and I saw Santa putting presents under the tree. My sister said, ‘No you didn’t,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I did!’ and I was really convinced that I had seen Santa. It was months afterward that I finally said, ‘Wait a minute. This doesn’t really add up, does it?’ And one of the worst parts was realizing that my whole family knew that I’d made up the story of seeing Santa, and then convinced myself it was true. I felt really, really ashamed and stupid—that I was the last one to be let in on the big joke.” Because of her painful associations with the Man in the 14>
DECEMBER 16 - DECEMBER 22, 2011 PACIFIC SUN 13