Santa Claus is Real

A bold statement to make as a 16 year old who wants to be taken seriously, I know. But it is true.

I’ve just finished watching The Hogfather, which upon last year’s viewing got me thinking this and although I was too late to post it last year, I will share why I think that Santa is indeed real.

Aside from the obvious point that even if Santa Claus is not real he is based upon the real Saint Nicholas of Myra who gave gifts to the impoverished, the modern fat man with reindeers and such exists too. Although he isn’t actually making a trip around the sky with a sleigh to give presents to everyone in a physical sense, I’d say that in a mental sense he is. Well maybe not the presents part.

If there were no truth at all in the concept then why would there be a man in a fat suit at every shopping centre for a 12th of the year? Why would it be fashionable to have santa shaped lights in a our yard to illuminate the house-front?
Why would Air Services Australia have spent a fortnight making plans to ensure Santa’s airspace is not intruded by emergency or late night aircrafts in Australian airspace?

Because whether you want to believe in a fat man with a sleigh and reindeer is coming through the air tonight or simply that when you wake up tomorrow it will be the 25th of December, Santa will be there somewhere. Thousands if not millions if not billions of children will be in bed now with the only thing stopping them from staying awake all night in anxious excitement for tomorrow is that if they don’t sleep then Santa won’t come. That is power.

The myth that Santa won’t come if you stay awake waiting for him? Well that is true, because if you stay up then Santa won’t come- that is common sense as he isn’t a physical man coming into your house, so if that is what you are waiting for then of course it won’t happen. But if you go to sleep believing that Santa will come, then that thought is what ensures its truth. Like a kind of believe it to see it thing.

There is no point filming the sky to point out the exact moment Santa passes over because the result will not be identifiable, but if you think he’ll come then he will, leaving no evidence of it at all, except for the thousands if not millions if not billions of sleeping children, shopping centre stand ins, fairy light manufactures, airspace controllers.

I know that Santa is too often used as the figurehead of the over-commercialization that the holiday season has become, but the spirit of Christmas is still there. Yesterday when I posted my anti-capitalist rant on the holiday I was waving that flag, and waving that flag is necessary in this day and age. But it is the night before Christmas and for one night at least I think I can put my campaigning and opinions down for a short break. It would be a mistake to think that all the world’s problems will go away just because it is Christmas- a view that The Weekend Australian tried to convey last weekend, but if we don’t stop to celebrate things like this then what is all the campaigning and opinion stuff for?

On a more scientific note even if Santa was a physical man traveling the world, of course he can do it in an entire night! It is about 11:10pm in the cities sensible enough to get daylight saving, unlike our own miserable sleepy town where it is only 10:10pm. That gives Santa a whole hour just to travel up to the Queensland border. It’s only 8:10pm in China so a couple of hours before they get their visit from Santa. 12:10pm in London, 4:10am in California- the sun hasn’t even risen for the day before Christmas in west-coast America, Santa has plenty of time.

But wherever in the world you are, I hope you have a very merry Christmas, whatever material stuffs you get or whatever family events you attend or don’t attend or whatever else happens. Even if you don’t get into the holidays season spirit, the 25th of December only happens once a year so you might as well enjoy it.