Henry and Santa

 "You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all of your heart." Jeremiah 29:13

Henry will be seven in a few months. He is quite something lately. Coming into his own. His own ideas, beliefs, values. His own identity. He is a passionate one. He inexorably defends his conceptions of morality and justice, in word (e.g., "you are not my boss!") and by deed (e.g., punching Charlie). He is staking out his place; working out his salvation. He is also an intuitive observer. He is not afraid to ask questions to make sense of the world. Generally, I can handle his inquisitive nature, which is mostly fixated on the differences between male and female anatomy. It's all fairly black and white. (I rely heavily on Wikipedia.)

At the close of a long day Charlie, Henry and I sat together after a long day, eating ice cream. Henry had just lost his first tooth and was very proud to show it to me in a little wooden jewelry box, which he would leave under his pillow for the Tooth Fairly. The boys listened while I read from Lee Strobel's, The Case for a Creator, a book which argues the existence of God. It's best in small doses. We read some, then we talked. Charlie asked me to define unfamiliar words and terms for him as we went along; "narrow-minded fundamentalists", "random genetic mutation", "unguided natural process", "iconoclast", "Darwinism". We were chatting, wrapping our minds around ideas such as humans being ancestors of trees and monkeys, macro and micro evolution and the "missing link", the fossilized remains of the part bird/part reptile archaeopteryx. However, the discussion quickly devolved.

"Tell me the truth!" He demanded. "Is Santa Claus real?"

Charlie sat next to me on the couch, furtively eyeing me to see how I would respond to Henry's interrogatory.

Charlie doesn't ask questions about the world. Of course, I'm exaggerating, but when he comes to me with a question, his mind seems to me to be more or less made up. I think his ideas are shaped differently than Henry's. He interprets what he sees internally, formulates his opinion, and looks to other things for confirmation of his newly formed beliefs.

Charlie remembers well, and so do I, sitting across from me at a fast-casual Japanese restaurant, discussing St. Nick. He was four years old. As was his recollection, "I knew it was impossible for someone to deliver presents to a billion people in one night." His limited experiences had taught him to know the implausibility of such a feat. It wasn't a question of whether Santa existed, it was a conclusion. He looked to me to confirm what his logic denied. What did he conclude about me that day?

On the other hand, Henry is good at living in the gray. He checks things out. He gathers information, experiments. His ideas are flexible and he socializes them. Sometimes his socialization of an idea is so aggressive, it seems like conviction, but I think it's just his way of trying things out.

It didn't take too long for me to come clean to Henry. If I had been more conscientious about what I believed 10 years ago, I would have never done Santa Claus. (I would also have opted out of circumcising the boys. It's barbaric.)

Santa Claus is BS. So is the Christmas that most of us celebrate; an exchange of meaningless material goods among the poor for the benefit of the rich. Lying to kids about anything is also BS. Lies are complicated to unravel and trust is undermined.

After it was settled that mom and dad lied to him about Santa, he asked for a piece of paper to write a note to the Tooth Fairy telling him/her "PLEAS DO NOT TAKE"(the tooth). I felt like breaking the news to him then about the Tooth Fairy, but I didn't want to overload him. After that, we read a little more from the Stobel book. Henry fell asleep on the couch. I carried Henry to his bed. Charlie followed and I tucked him in.

I paused at Henry's bed and prayed for him silently, watched him sleep.  I considered leaving him a note that said, "Dear Henry, I am a liar. The tooth fairy is not real either. but you must believe me, God exists. Trust me." I didn't. I have little control. God draws people even in the midst of distractions and lies. To those with dads who are good and those with bad ones. He will find out someday. He'll ask the questions because that's what he does. And he'll ask questions about God too. And he'll discover the truth if he looks for it.