Our class discussion about how we found out Santa Claus was not real made me recall my own story and I felt the need to do a little blogging about it. The Christmas holiday season was always, and still is, the ultimate time of year. Not only was I able to see family I would rarely see, eat delicious food and get all sorts of presents, it was the same time for my birthday…which really only meant more presents and a cool party to me. I would begin making my “Christmas Wish List” months in advance. After every commercial break I would be writing down a new toy to my list. Some years it would grow to be a few pages long. I knew full well that I would never get everything on my list, especially a dog which happened to be the first thing on the list every year, but since my parents were allergic, I knew they were high hopes, but regardless I put it down hoping that maybe one year they were feeling extra generous and loving and would reconsider. They never did.
What I loved almost more than the big gifts, were the small little surprises I would find in my stocking Christmas morning. Usually I would have an idea of what was under the tree because they were all mostly picked from my list, but my stocking always carried the unexpected gadgets and doodads and different flavored lip glosses. As soon as I woke up I would skid down the hallway nearly missing the door from my speed and barely skim the top of the stairs to the basement and to the fireplace where my beloved stocking would usually rest on the hearth because it was too weighed down with goodies to hang.
One Christmas morning when I was six years old, I woke up exceptionally early but the adrenaline from realizing it was finally Christmas morning kept me from realizing that the sun had yet to rise. So as I did every Christmas morning, I shot out of bed and down the hall almost missing the staircase and flew down the stairs to the basement, but as soon as I hit the last step I heard something that put me in a shock of joy. “It must be SANTA! SANTA IS IN MY BASEMENT!!!” I stepped down the last stair oh so quietly to be sure I would not scare him off and maybe take with him my gadgets and doodads and different flavored lip glosses. To my utter horror, there was no fat man in a bulging red suit with a massive toy bag draping over his shoulder, it was my mom in her blue pajamas with a Wal-Mart sack sagging from her forearm. I was mortified and did not know what to do. I stood there for what seemed like five minutes trying to register the thought that my mom was the one who had been filling my stocking all of these years, not jolly ol’ Santa Claus.
I finally snuck back up the stairs and back to my bed with a quarter of the enthusiasm I had coming down. I lay in my bed, finally able to make out what had just happened and I began to cry. I cried myself to sleep that night, all because of a silly make believe character, used to make me believe it was possible to reach every house in a matter of hours, no longer existed in my little six year old world. I was crushed. But I got over it, thankfully.
My mom still does not have a clue that the reason I do not believe in Santa Claus is because of her. I doubt I will ever tell her. I think she would be heartbroken to find out that she was the reason I cried myself to sleep that one, sad, Christmas morning. Either that or she would laugh…but I will never know.
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