It occurred to me this Christmas morning in China - as I watched Manika inspect the cookie crumbed plate and empty cup of milk she left out for Santa - that it seems fundamentally wrong to celebrate the birth of a diety by lying straight up to the innocent. Is it just cultural hypocrisy or is the lie forgiven because we are giving the gift of magic?
The question entered my head pretty late into the holiday season – Wednesday night to be exact – primarily because in China, there is no conflict. The holiday has been adopted in its basest form (as has Halloween and Valentines’ Day)– an opportunity for consumerism. In Carrefour (China’s Walmart) Christmas lights weren’t even put out for sale until the week before. The magical sentiment that we’re so accustomed to feeling in the West (right after Halloween) hasn’t been imported at all. It is all no-nonsense practicality. Glitzy trees. Imported Christmas music. Starbucks holiday lattes. A slight increase in domestic sales of kids’ things.
I’d like to be able to introduce what happened next with an “as a result” except that would sort of be stretching the truth. China made it easy to put this debate out of my mind, but I can’t say it was the main cause of my avoidance. So I’ll just say, subsequently, I started to wrap gifts on Wednesday night and realized that my discomfort with the lie had led “Santa” to buy poor Manika nothing.
Yep, nothing.
I stared at the gifts for friends’ kids, the sad small gifts from “Mom and Dad” to Manika. But there was no big box, no magical surprise, no jaw dropping toy to unwrap. And so I had to finally make a decision. To participate or reject?
I put in a panicked call to my friend just to get some assurance that I wasn’t a terrible mom. She’s American. I was. Then the image of Manika waking up on Christmas morning, opening up a box of books – I bought her books – entered my head. I imagined the eyebrow furrow, the sad explanations to her teacher “I don’t know why? Santa brought me nothing.” I couldn’t take it.
The next morning, I arranged a discrete play date with the same above mentioned friend’s daughter so that we could make a Toys R Us run while my husband watched the kids. Once I crossed into the hallowed plastic kingdom of toys, I kicked into American Christmas shopper autopilot. My mind zeroed in on the girl’s section, self edited out the too young and too old and too silly gifts. I dumped huge boxes in my bag. Musical toy. Check. Painting toy. Check. Playdough toy. Check. Having no other Americans to help set the standards for me, I kept the number of gifts at the kids’ ages – Manika got 3 gifts, Avik got 1. Toys R Us wrapped everything for me so that in thirty minutes flat, my responsibility to Santa was gone.
But intead of feeling relief, I had that same mixed tightness in my stomach from the day before. That night, I simply had to ask my usually hyper-organized self, “What is going on?”
The question has even more context when dropped into the backlight of my past few weeks. I must say, they’ve been personally magical. They kicked off with a visit from dear old friends from England and then rose to good sales in my children’s book, the launching of three new projects, a number of successfully taught classes, a few freelance article assignments and a renting of a cool little writing space in Puxi. Much of this I owe purely to God’s grace, and much I owe to Him blessing my incessantly obsessively efforts. It has been a great month.
But instead of feeling euphorically buzzed by the whole thing, confident that the page in my life has turned, that I’m deep in a new phase, I find myself feeling tight and fearful. I mean, isn’t life supposed to be more downs then ups, more challenges than easy coasting? Isn’t it all supposed to be hard? What’s going on? Why’s it getting easier? Where’s the candid camera? The piece I’m missing? The sharp left turn idea obliterating my novel? The culture police clamping down on kids’ books on eating?
Upon reflection, I realized I drug that bahumbug into the Christmas buying season, so that my fear of magic in my own life manifested itself into a fear of inserting false beliefs in it into Manika’s life. The night of all this thinking, I chastised myself, reminded myself to believe that life was full of good things as well, that a string of good luck didn’t need to be horrifically truncated. But the realization did nothing. While I set the cookies and milk out with Manika on Christmas Eve, I still felt about as bad as I did sneaking out of the house at thirteen, lying to my parents. This morning, it took all my effort not to say, “Manika, did you like the presents I got you?”
Church did not help. Manika was front and center in song singing, smiling away at Joy to the World. I kept looking in her face for some way to reason my deception away, kept waiting for her own extreme personal happiness to inspire me to lie again through ages four through eight (when and how do you tell them the truth?). I kept looking for some sign that the lie was worth it, that the whole experience changed her in some way for the better. Unfortunately, there was nothing. She seemed about as happy about getting a lollipop at the service as she did the drumset, playdough ice cream maker, and imported German finger painting set. I was deflated, and that made me almost certain that it was the beginning of the end for which I’d been so carefully looking. It was the first down moment in a string of up ones.
And then I sat down to write. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write about, but I just knew I wanted to, that this debate was raging in my head, that it needed to find a way to be settled. As I started, the words just came and that’s how it’s been for me over these past few weeks. The ideas, the chances, the opportunities just keep coming towards me. After years and years of drought and struggle in New York to find a path as a writer, the sheer abundance is so unnerving, so out of balance with what I’m used to that I find myself feeling wholly undeserving. I realize I’ve completely lost my belief in possibility, in life’s chance to actual give you more than what you wanted. I keep thinking this isn’t all for me.
I can see now where Santa’s power lies. Embedded in that Christmas morning surprise, of receiving so many gifts from a benevolent spirit in the sky, kids’ get a taste of sheer generosity, abundance, wishes being granted, getting something without earning it. I think now, quite simply, that it’s a good thing to experience once in a while. In fact, it’s healthy to get more than your imagination pictured, to be pleasantly surprised. After all, isn’t that what Jesus did tenfold from Santa? Didn’t he come and give humanity so much more than it bargained for, so much more than it even knew it ever needed?
I can’t say I still condone the lying, but I can now make a comfortable enough argument for Santa’s importance to repeat the tale again next year. I must also say, for the first time in years, I take comfort in the spirit that moved me to shower Manika with new things, buy my husband an Ipod Touch, splurge on theater tickets for my parents, give my Chinese ayi a generous raise. If I can find it within myself to give selflessly at least once a year (and I am clearly uncomfortable with excessive goodness) how much more does God have in Himself year round, especially since he has none of my baggage and hang-ups. If Santa reminds the world that all this kindness and generosity exists, then what harm is there really in perpetuating the tale?
I guess I’ll really know when Manika finds out the truth. In the meantime, I’ll take the reminder that life can actually look up, and up, and then up even more.
Merry Christmas!
