Why We Should Believe in Santa Claus

Whenever my kids question me about wether or not I believe in Santa Claus I always answer them with a very confident, YES! For the last few years they have come to me with stories from the kids at school and in the neightborhood who do not believe in Santa or who say that there is no Santa Claus. My response to them has been that I think those kids are silly not to believe in Santa. I expain to them that it is harmless to believe in Santa, and if you don't believe in Santa you might not get a gift from him on Christmas morning. So, wether they really believe or not, we continue on with the myth and the tradition.

This week I was thrilled to read a story in the Sunday Parade magazine that helped me to justify my continuing belief in Santa. Here is a short exerpt from the article...

"There is a moment in J.M Barrie's Peter Pan when the audience is invited to revive the dying fairy Tinkerbell and told, 'If you believe in fairies, clap your hands.' And every time, the theater breaks into sustained applause. That is not to suggest there are theaters full of seriously deluded people. What it does tell us is that there are times when we need to pretend to believe in things we know not to be true. We know that the world is a place of suffering and hardship, and we know too, that justice and kindness and love and such things will not always prevail against these hard realities. Myths help us to get by. The day they all die and we tell our children exactly how things are, the world will be a poorer, less enchanted place. So don't be ashamed to clap your hands at Peter Pan or act as if Santa exists. He stands for kindness and generosity, and those things are alive and will continue to be alive --as long as we believe."

~ Alexander McCall Smith

To read the article in it's entirety go to Parade magazine online.