Earth Sensory Perception is a subsection of Our Uncertain Future and a compilation of essays on connecting intuitively with the natural world. These essays are free to all for the first two weeks before going behind a paywall for paid subs only.
Santa Claus Versus Fairies
Before my daughter started high school, in the years before the 2020 pandemic, we used to travel a lot, about three months out of the year. Often, we spent holidays abroad. We figured out how to make Xmas and Chanukkah work in multiple lands. In some places, like Quenca, Equador, Christmas was built into the culture, a multi-day parade of people from villages across the country right outside the door of our little apartment. In other places like, Bali, Indonesia, there wasn’t so much going on. There were no Christmas lights decorating houses, no parades, and no Santa Claus with children lined up to sit on his knee. That might have been what made precocious ten-year-old Flora suspicious.
A couple days before Christmas, after I purchased local artisan toys to wrap in paper and assign to Santa, as was customary for our overseas holidays, Flora turned to me and asked if Santa existed.
“Tell me the truth,” she said, looking me straight in the eyes, “the absolute truth.”
This was a moment of reckoning. Do I continue to lie to this very intelligent child, knowing she will find out soon enough? Do I continue to justify my lie with half-truths about the “spirit of Santa in all of us” some such bullshit? Or do I give her what she is asking for and tell her the truth?
“No,” I confessed solemnly, “Santa is not real.”
“What?!” she exclaimed. “Why did you tell me? You should have lied.”
In that moment my heart broke. Seriously, that may have been one of the worse heartbreaks of my adult life. I could see that something broke in her too, her belief in magic. I stomped on her childhood imagination, her dreams of magical lands and mythical creatures. I was the worst mother ever.
“This means the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist either,” she concluded sadly without needing me to agree.
Oh no, I destroyed her innocence. I should have known better. Of course she didn’t want the truth. She was ten after all, and too smart to still believe in Santa Claus unless she was in conscientious denial. She wanted to believe. She wanted me to lie to her.
And that’s when I blurted out with all sincerity, “But fairies really do exist!”
She looked reasonably suspicious.
“I swear it!”
And I meant it. I have always believed and continue to believe in fairies. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. They’re everywhere. Not like Tinkerbell humanoids with translucent wings, but like glitter, puffs, flits and sparks (and sometimes translucent wings). You’ve probably seen them too, whether you knew it or not.
I’m not alone in my belief.
