My last post told the story of Saint Nicholas on which Santa Claus is largely based, now let’s dive into how I have come to once again believe Santa is real:
Santa is only a few days away from his famous night ride but unfortunately, most adults these days don’t think he exists.
Now many of us think this because someone told us he’s not real at some point in our childhood. Whether it was a mischievous classmate who ruined the secret or a parent who also doesn’t know, most of us believe that because reindeer cannot fly and a jolly fat man would never fit down a chimney, that he does not exist.
But Santa Claus is real nonetheless. And I hope that when I am done here, you will understand how it’s possible that those dastardly classmates and silly parents are wrong.
As I hinted earlier a lot of the idea that Santa Claus doesn’t exist is rooted in the idea that only material objects exist. This is a grave error of the modern world and one that falls apart upon inspection.
Nearly everyone would agree that things like love or sadness exist. But you cannot physically hold or look at love or sadness themselves. A father teaching his son to fish is an act of love but it is not love itself. And when your favorite shirt gets a hole in it, that is sad, but it is not sadness itself. These concepts cannot be contained in a single body or container but we all know they are real. So now we have established that there are things that are real but are not concrete.
Yet we mostly think that, because no physical man in a sleigh lands on our roofs at night, he does not exist.
Santa is everywhere during the Christmas season. People dress up like him, talk about him, write songs about him, and make movies about him. So obviously he does exist and he plays out in the real world.
In this way, Santa is something like a spirit. It is in the spirit of Santa Claus that you give gifts to people on Christmas.
In our modern world we want a clear answer so it’s no wonder we say he doesn’t exist; there is no singular person we can meet that we can say is Santa. If you were to meet me you would easily be able to identify that this in front of you is Collin. Santa is harder to contain because he does not have a physical body but he is still a real being who acts in the world.
If we have no issue saying that immaterial things like love exist, then maybe we can consider that other immaterial things and beings like Santa exist too.
Thank you for reading.
Merry Christmas.