The Real Christmas Magic Is Big Brothers Keeping The Santa Secret

If you asked my four sons when they stopped believing in Santa, they would tell you the truth minus about two to three years. Now that they are tall men with serious beards and their own cellphone plans, they seem to look back at their Santa years with a blush. Like they really should have known it was me all along, writing thank you letters for the milk and cookies from Santa on special North Pole paper, setting up their Playmobil sets and their trucks and their swords under the tree. I want to ask them sometimes, How would you have known? I did everything in my power to keep it going for as long as possible. I lied and I lied and as soon as I suspected you might not believe me, I doubled down hard and lied some more. I regret a whole lot of things about the way I parented, but this is not one of them.

Because when they eventually found out that I had lied, in those uncomplicated twilight years of their boyhood, they were right there with me.

At first, the older two boys didn’t say a word to me about not believing. They merrily kept up the ruse for two or three years until one of them admitted that their dad accidentally let the cat out of the bag and they dragged me, kicking and screaming, into our new reality. Their Santa years were over. I was heartbroken. Their poor father was terrified to take my calls, this was the level of my desperation to keep them exactly where they were.

That part I probably regret. Because our truest, most beautiful, most generous Christmases lay spread out ahead of us. Three or four years of them at least. The years when my older boys were in on the secret, too, and would do anything to keep the magic going for their little brothers.

I didn’t have to wait until everyone was asleep to finish wrapping presents and stuffing stockings; we started our own new rituals instead.

I don’t know how I’d forgotten about this part of Christmas that sort of became the best part of the holidays for me. I should have remembered from my own Santa years. When one of my aunts showed me where my presents were hidden under beds and in closets. I was 7, and it was Christmas Eve in our big, noisy house. And I remember going sort of quiet in myself. Like a small grieving widow, I stared out at the red light at the end of our street I’d always been sure was Rudolph’s nose and thought, Wait, I think that light is there all year round. I didn’t tell my mom what happened. I didn’t tell anyone. I just opened up my weird marionette puppet on Christmas morning from Santa and pretended I still believed. And I quickly figured out I liked the pretending. It was nicer, easier, than staring directly into that puppet’s black eyes where she lay in her box underneath my Nana’s bed, her purple satin outfit undisturbed and unnatural. She looked so much better under the Christmas tree. We all did, all of us liars and pretenders except for my two little brothers who still believed. I wasn’t jealous of them, which was weird because I was always jealous of them. Instead, I was choosing to be part of a new club, a better club in so many ways. I was in on the secret and that felt like its own kind of magic.

When my older boys finally admitted to me that they knew, my own Christmases got better. I didn’t have to wait until everyone was asleep to finish wrapping presents and stuffing stockings; we started our own new rituals instead. Watching It’s a Wonderful Life and eating appetizers together. Playing cards. A board game or two. I wasn’t alone in all of it all of the sudden.

They put together the Playmobil sets under the tree that Santa used to do for them, they took bites out of his cookies and splashed a bit of eggnog on the letter for authenticity. They swore they heard reindeer hooves when we all woke up in the morning.

When one of my younger boys couldn’t sleep, it was his older brother who carried him back to bed after he finally fell asleep on the couch. Who told him he should just try not to think about Santa coming because it would help him to relax. That Santa would come after he was asleep. He carried him to bed and whispered, “Can you pause the movie for me?” and we all just settled into our new life together.

They helped me in so many ways. Told me to cut back on the stocking stuffers that always ended up costing me so much more money than I had budgeted and just focus on the candy. They put together the Playmobil sets under the tree that Santa used to do for them, they took bites out of his cookies and splashed a bit of eggnog on the letter he wrote back to them for authenticity. They swore they heard reindeer hooves when we all woke up in the morning. They walked with them to put their letters to Santa in the special mailbox.

We kept the little guys believing until the year I bought a Ping-Pong table. It needed to be assembled, which resulted in a lot of loud grumbling from the two older boys, the kind of grumbling that woke their brothers, who didn’t say a word about not believing that year, either. They didn’t want to hurt my feelings. They weren’t mad. (I’ve asked each of them about it over and over, because I did, in fact, lie my face off to them for years.)

My youngest son told me just yesterday, “I was fine when I found out. I liked believing in Santa, but it was really nice to know how hard people worked to make me believe in magic.”

It was a kind of magic. It is a kind of magic.