Is Santa Real?
And an excerpt from my favorite book...
Watch until 1:01:
Before you start reading, listen to this in the background while you read; “Remembering Childhood” in a separate tab.
Miracle On 34th Street a simple enough movie. There’s not anything too crazy going on but I think the 90s charm and the thought-provoking ideas have made it a favorite of mine.
I think this opening sums up the movie really well. An innocent kid thinks that the man standing next to him on the sidewalk is Santa. He sees through his disguise as an old man! At the end of the short exchange we’re second guessing whether or not this man is, or is not the ‘real’ Santa.
The whole movie is like this. A constant back and forth of you believing in the ‘magical’ Santa and then being met with the doubt that perhaps, he’s just a lunatic, and deserves the situations this puts him in.
As Shel and I watched this the other night, I have been listening to my favorite book (an annual tradition) called “Manalive” (yes, one word) by GK Chesterton and couldn’t help but draw some pretty big parallels between the two stories. Both following some eccentric characters as their leading man.
Throughout both of these stories, a fundamental question is asked and I think in the wrestling, I’ve come to a bit more understanding about how I feel about life.
“Manalive’s” premise follows Innocent Smith, ‘invading’, a boarding house, generally creating chaos, and proposing to a woman he’s only just met. This is quickly followed by him firing a revolver at one of the boarders and bringing an investigation upon himself form the houses occupants where they learn that he has done this before in several different instances. It’s hilarious, extremely well written, and so incredibly profound that there’s really not much for you to do but go and read it.
Towards the end of the book, his defense says this about him,
He refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive... The idea that Smith is attacking is this. Living in an entangled civilization, we have come to think certain things wrong which are not wrong at all. We have come to think outbreak and exuberance, banging and barging, rotting and wrecking, wrong. In themselves they are not merely pardonable; they are unimpeachable.
This quote makes a lot more sense once you give the book a read but once you do you’ll see this... The eccentricities that both Innocent Smith and Kris Kringle have in common are this... they are both men who refuse to fit into the mold that ‘proper’ society has given us. They are innocent. They do not mind what others think of them, feel shame for believing the things they believe, or do things out of hate. Their eccentricities stem from love, joy, kindness. They are children in the best way possible.
Earlier in the book, one of the occupants of the house harps on the idea of Innocence,
But my revolution, like yours, like the earth’s, will end up in the holy, happy place — the celestial, incredible place — the place where we were before.
To me, this before speaks to the idea of childhood. Of the path to getting back to where we started. Why is it we don’t believe in Santa Claus when we grow up? Why is it that we put away childish things when we are adults? What does that really say about us and our evolving philosophies into adulthood?
Kris Kringle in the film, seeks to hold a mirror up to everyone he comes in contact with about this very thing. People either understand him (mostly kids), or think he’s crazy. Maybe he’s nothing but sane? This is one of the reasons I have such a hard time putting my finger on the ‘magic’ of Christmas, there really is something about the childlikeness of Christmas that gets us giddy! That shows us who we really are? Maybe I’m preaching to myself here. I’m trying to put down in words, the feeling I have when I’m brought up against the myth of someone like St. Nicholas? The reality of a man that grew into an idea, a movement, who overtook the true meaning of Christmas (the saviors birth and the beginning of our salvation) or, of Innocent Smith, a man holding up a mirror to the common man and saying, “look at how ridiculous you are in your ‘rule following and regulations’. Where is your sense of adventure? Of childhood?”
To really live... why there’s some mixture of the the rational and irrational at play, no? Can magic really exist? Growing up, we’re taught that we should put away our fanciful notions. To stop playing , but what if, to really grow up, it meant that we made monuments out of those fantasies of ours? Ebenezer’s to cherish them and remember them, even in our adulthood? I haven’t met one adult that doesn’t like Disneyland... why that’s all about bringing your childhood back to life.
I think I sounded cliché from the beginning but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, aren’t we all on a journey to come back to innocents? To childhood in some way? I think that’s what Kris and Innocent Smith have in common. Oh and I’m not talking about childhood as in your exact childhood historically... I’m thinking of childhood as a concept, a way of being, the ideal essence of what childhood should be? A time of purity, of charity, of the best parts of you that you’ve hidden away to protect or because you’ve been hurt.
As a new parents, I’m thinking about this a lot more. How do I tow-the-line in coming back to my own childhood, preparing our children for ‘the real world’ and also showing them the magic of childhood? I think it begs the question... Am I doing a good job being childlike?