Christmas Lessons From Our 10-Year-Old

We have a 10-year-old daughter and she knows. Like…she KNOWS. Christmas morning. Santa.

She knows.

It happened last summer after she had just turned 9. It started with the Tooth Fairy and the conversation quickly turned to the Jolly Old Elf.

(By the way, we had the conversation about exactly how babies are made BEFORE we had the conversation about Santa. I don’t know if that makes me a good mom or a terrible mom. The jury’s still out on how much therapy she’ll need when she’s older.)

She handled the Santa conversation just fine. Or at least, better than I did. I was a wreck inside as I told her. I’ll spare you all the details, but in the end, I wrapped it up with letting her know that at the ripe old age of 30-something, I still look up at the sky every Christmas Eve before I tuck myself in, just in case I can catch a glimpse of Santa and his sleigh.

I also told her that she was now in on the secret and that she was part of the team with me and dad to keep the secret special for her little brother.

She didn’t let us down last Christmas. Anyone would be lucky to have her on their elf team.

Naturally, I thought the magic would start to slide as another Christmas went by this year, but she threw us for a loop.

The day after Thanksgiving, she put the final touches on her handwritten letter to Santa that she had been working on for days. It was the most time she had ever spent on a letter to Santa in her entire life. She asked him how the North Pole was. She told him she’d been nice, and a little naughty, this past year. (Maybe she knows she can’t pull the wool over his eyes anymore.) And she asked for a few simple things for Christmas - funky socks, a music book, a toy, and a gift card to a climbing gym.

I watched her delicately fold the letter and put it in an envelope. Then she looked up at me with a twinkle in her eye and asked “Mom, what’s Santa’s address?”

I smirked, silently agreeing to play her game, and said “Let me look that up for you.” Go ahead, Google it. The US Postal Services lists an official address for the big guy.

She neatly wrote his address and her return address on the envelope and handed me the letter. “Can you get this to Santa?”

“Yeah, Kiddo. I’ll get it to him.”

The magic is still there.

But the magic is still there because she chooses for it to still be there. She knows the truth, but she also knows that Christmas will feel a little more special if she still believes.

It made me think…

What if we all took a cue from her?

Not about Christmas, but maybe about the world around us.

At some point, maybe in your 20s or earlier depending on your life circumstances, you learn that the world isn’t what you thought. People can be mean. Life can be unfair. Things don’t always work out how you would have wanted.

Maybe the magic is lost.

But even knowing that, what if we just chose to believe that there was still goodness everywhere. What if we believed people could still be good and that life will end up fair and things will work out in the way that is best in the end.

Could we choose to see everything a little more magical? Could we choose to have a little twinkle in our eye as we walked through our days? Could we choose to believe that not everyone was out to get us?

Could we just choose to believe in goodness?

I might try it this week. You’re welcome to join me.