When I was in fourth grade, I was utterly alone in my continued belief in the myth of Santa Claus. I was persistently ridiculed for my faithfulness. In my efforts to understand why my classmates’ parents had to buy them Christmas gifts every year and mine didn’t, I developed my own theory of Santa Claus that helped to resolve the cognitive dissonance that troubled my young mind.
I reasoned that my classmates and their parents lacked the faith necessary to allow Santa to freely and abundantly meet their Christmas wishes. I on the other hand had parents who were faithful to Saint Nick (as was I) and therefore we all experienced the abundant Christmas miracle every single year of my brief blessed life up to that point.
Despite having worked out a plausible theory for the disparity between my experiences and those of my classmates, the ridicule of my unrelenting classmates caused me to ask a fateful mid-December question of my dear mother. In a moment my faith was shattered by her honest response. My faithless classmates were vindicated, and my magical world came crashing down around me. In short order I lost the winter miracle of Santa, the hope and wonder that came with the Easter Bunny in spring, and the Tooth Fairy’s wonderful compensation for my occasional dental disappearances. I cried and I cried for what I had lost. After recovering from my loss, I committed myself to helping my parents to be Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy for my younger siblings from that day forward.
Secrets of the Story
As I have replayed my memories of that fourth grade December, my appreciation for the desperate theory I developed has grown. Several decades later, I have once again become a little child who knows the magic of God’s Love. Instead of waiting for an annual Christmas miracle, I now get to experience the daily miracle of the inflowing of God’s Divine Essence of Unconditional Love into my soul in response to my prayers and prayerful way of being.
Instead of hoping for occasional visits by mythical beings, I now get to spend my time in the glorious presence of God and in the beautiful company of so many love-filled souls and the many gifts and blessings they bring. I know many people who do not know the precious gift of God’s Love. My heart longs that all of my soul siblings may experience this freely offered Christmas gift for themselves. Christmas is not about believing in certain stories or characters, it is about the powerful experience and effects of God’s Holy Love on our lives and our world. I pray that we may all awaken more and more to the reality of God’s Love for the salvation of our souls, our families, our communities, and God’s World.
I am wondering how old you were when your world of Santa came crashing down.
I was 8 years old. 🙂
A heartfelt revealing that is similar to my own but not quite. My mother and step dad never admittted the Santa myth scenario and I never brazenly asked if the rumors were true, those that came from my more street smart friends. I was left to draw my own conclusions and later in life I was able to duplicate my spiritual myths into questions that needed to come from my spiritual Dad and He answered my question; What is Truth and can it really set me free.
Thanks, Bill, for sharing your childhood faith in Santa and the grief and disappointment when you learned that it was not the truth and that your classmates were right after all. As Jesus expresses in the Padgett messages his distaste for church-going people worshipping him at this time of the year, and believing the lie that he is God and that his shed blood saves us, I have a personal distaste for all the lies surrounding and intertwined in the Christmas story of Jesus’ birth. Were it that children were brought up in the truth from the beginning because it is much harder to unlearn and let go of falsehoods.
The Christmas season is a wonderfully powerful opportunity to seek God’s Love for the healing and transformation of our souls, and to seek guidance on how we may dismantle a darkened world built upon fear and violence and build God’s Bright New World of Incorruptible Love and Unshakable Peace. The Light of the Creator shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. It will not overcome it.