Santa Claus...man or myth....or our parents?

Christmas time during childhood was great. There was a Santa Claus who came to bring you presents when you were good, or put a lump of coal in your stocking if you were bad. I, personally, never got a lump of coal in my stocking, even though I know I was not a good girl all year long. That should have been my first clue to knowing that there was no Santa Claus. It is pretty amazing to what great lengths parents will go to to keep you believing in Santa, too. I mean as a kid, my mom would take me to the window at night and point out to me a red flashing light and tell me that that was Rudolph, so I had better get to bed. Of course, it was just a passing airplane. It is rather convenient that Rudolph had a red flashing nose, and flying planes have red flashing lights. I wonder if Rudolph or the airplane came first...I guess I will have to look that up. Of course, this was just a way for our parents to get us to go to bed early. I guess they had to have that one day out of the year when we would actually listen and go to bed, or else Santa would pass up our house! Pretty sneaky of our parents, isn't it. I would always bake cookies, with my mom's help of course, and leave the cookies and some milk for Santa to snack on during his long journey. And in the morning, of course, the milk and cookies were, amazingly enough, all gone! Even though kids tend to take things at face value and will believe pretty much anything the adults tell them, I should have been smart enough to know that no one, no matter how fast, could possibly travel to every house in the entire world in one night. And I must have been pretty gullible to believe that Santa could fit himself and that big bag of presents down a chimney. I mean, when I was a kid, we didn't even have a chimney, which was a source of worry for me, but only at Christmas time. But our parents kept the "Santa" presents hidden in some secret compartment in the house, which, even after I found out that there was no Santa, I never found. And I should have wondered how Santa could be in every shopping mall that I went to. The man was fast, but how could anyone be everywhere at the same time? My mom and dad just told me that those were Santa "impersonators" who Santa hired to help him out. I was in second grade when I found out that Santa Claus was not real, and that it was our parents, in fact, who were the real Santa impersonators. Still, even after the big secret was let out and my childhood beliefs in Santa , the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy were crushed, Christmas still remained a time of happiness and surprise for me. I always liked to decorate and to bake goodies for others, and I still do. I love to buy gifts and pick out funny and cute Christmas cards for my family and friends. And I love to watch my friends open their presents and see the look of surprise on their faces. Santa may not be real, but he sure did provide a source of wonder and awe for us as children while we still believed. And though we were most definitely mad at our parents for telling us there was a Santa, we will too, no doubt, tell our children about Santa Claus and keep the Santa lie going for yet another generation. But that is ok, because I don't think Christmas would have been the same without him.