Santa is Magic

It’s Christmas time – a time that I always imagined would be full of magic and excitement for my children. And, it is. But there is a little something extra tossed in there that I was not expecting.

There’s a little horror.

“Horror? At Christmas?” Yes. My sweet little four-year-old children, who just learned what death is this year, have taken that knowledge and applied it to my favorite holiday. They ask questions regarding Santa and his well-being that take me by surprise.

The first of these questions was pretty straightforward:

“Mama? Can Santa get dead?”

I paused and said, “No, Santa can’t die because he’s magic.”

Not bad, huh?! I was proud of that one, too. But then the questions went deeper, and got steadily darker.

“Mama, does Santa ever get lost and bonk into windows and crash through the glass?”

“What if the roof is so icy that Santa falls off the roof and breaks his head open?”

“What if some people kept the fire in their fireplace and Santa got burned up?”

Mercy.

For these questions, I rely on Santa’s magic and job experience. I remind my kids that Santa has been at this for a long time, so he knows his way around and won’t get lost, and his magic keeps him from getting hurt.

That has satisfied them for the time being. But it hasn’t kept the horror of Christmas from our home. Here is a song I caught my daughter singing to herself the other night:

“And Christmas is the best,
And Santa is on his sleigh,
And Santa is magic,
So he doesn’t get killed.”

For the most part, though, they have moved on to other pressing questions. For example: does Santa wear underpants? Which, I admit, is not something I have considered before. But now that I have, I like to think that Santa is a boxer-briefs kind of guy, that they are red…of course.

Merry Christmas!!

Meredith Bland is the mother of twins, born in 2008. Follow Meredith on her popular, award-winning blog, Pile of Babies.