Gather ‘round, parents. Your Auntie Aprill wants to tell you a story. A beautiful Christmas story about childhood and the magic of Santa. And what happens when it all goes horribly, horribly wrong.
It was a few years ago on a night just like tonight, with the warm glow inside the house keeping the cold and darkness at bay. My eldest child came to me, the very vision of childhood innocence in his pajamas, a smile on his lips and a slight twinkle in his eye.
And it all went sharply downhill from there.
In my defense, flimsy as it is, he asked me point blank.
“Is it you?” he asked.
It’s time, I thought to myself. He had been hinting for weeks that he knew The Truth. Luckily I was prepared. You don’t gaslight your own children for a good chunk of a decade without having an escape plan. And mine was a doozy. A Christmas narrative so beautiful and heartwarming, Dickens himself would bow to my obviously superior skills.
I put on my most serene and saintly smile, motherly wisdom practically radiating out of my pores, and began.
“It is, sweetie, but now that you know…”
I got no further.
“What!?” he cried out. “It is!? But I didn’t really want to know!”
Oh. Oh. Oooh.
“But listen!” I said, a bit too loudly, desperately trying to swallow my panic. “A long time ago, there really was a Santa Claus that gave presents to poor children and when he died…”
“Santa’s DEAD!?” he gasped.
Son of a Blitzen.
“No! Baby, no! Well, kind of…the point is he inspired millions of people for hundreds of years to keep the Christmas magic he started alive by…”
“By lying to kids?”
He had me by the sugarplums there.
“It’s not lying…per se. It’s…more like an untruth. A glittery, shining untruth that makes children happy.”
The Grinch himself couldn’t have produced a more withering stare. I could literally see my son’s heart shrink three sizes that day.
“I think I need a minute, mom,” he finally said, throwing a blanket over his head, his preferred method of dealing with Uncomfortable Things.
And there it was. The moment where I ruined his childhood. The moment where the downward spiral begins. First he’ll start acting out in school, carving candy cane shivs in detention. Then moving on to spray painting “Scrooge Had It Right The First Time” under bridges. Eventually there will be jail time, where he’ll emerge with a homemade tattoo of Krampus featuring comically warped proportions across his entire back.
Devastated, I headed to the kitchen in search of comfort. But standing in front of the 40 proof eggnog was my husband.
“He knows. About Santa. It was supposed to be you that he hated!” I told him with the sensitivity and subtlety I’m known for. “I’m the favorite parent!”
To my husband’s credit, he still tried to console me but it was useless. The image of me as the Infallible Tower of Matriarchal Love and Knowledge had been shattered.
Faintly, I heard my son calling for me from the living room. I gave my husband one last desperate look and turned to face my punishment.
As I approached, my son climbed up onto the ottoman so we were almost eye-to-eye. The better to headbutt me, I figured.
“Does keeping the Christmas magic alive mean that someone has to eat the cookies left out for Santa?” he asked.
I laughed in spite of myself.
“Yes. Yes it does. And I think I know the perfect person for the job.”
We both smiled as I gently wiped the last of his tears away.
“Now, mom, about the tooth fairy…”
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