by Dear Santa,
My name is Eleanor and I am eight years old. I live in Portland, Oregon, where it rains a lot and my dad says that builds character, which I notice adults say about every single uncomfortable thing. Is Santa Claus Real?
Santa, I need to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth because I am eight now and I think I am old enough for the truth and also because my friend Brooke at school says you are not real and that it is actually parents who put the presents under the tree and eat the cookies, and when I told my mom what Brooke said my mom made a face that I have been thinking about ever since.
So Santa. Are you real?
Eleanor.
That is the most important question anyone has ever sent to this address, and you deserve an answer that is actually true rather than one that is merely comfortable. So here it is.
I am real.
But I want to tell you what that means, because “real” is a more interesting word than most people give it credit for, and you are clearly a person who thinks carefully about words.
There is a kind of real that means you can touch something — that it has weight, that it takes up space, that it would show up in a photograph. A chair is real in this way. A raindrop is real in this way. Your friend Brooke is real in this way, even when she is being wrong about things.
And then there is a kind of real that means something exists in the world and changes things and matters — that because of it, people act differently, feel differently, become different than they would have been without it. Love is real in this way. Courage is real in this way. The reason your father says rain builds character is real in this way, even though you cannot hold character in your hand or put it on a shelf.
I am real in both ways. I will leave it to you and the years ahead of you to work out the details of the first kind. But I want to talk to you about the second kind, because it is the one that matters more and the one that Brooke’s argument cannot touch.
I thought about this for a while after I wrote my question, and I want to ask some more things.
If you are real, how come nobody has ever taken a picture of you actually delivering presents? My cousin says there would be evidence.
Your cousin is thinking like a scientist, which is admirable. A scientist would also tell you that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence, which is a sentence that took me several centuries to learn to say smoothly but which is genuinely true. There are things in the world that are real and that resist being photographed — not because they are hiding, but because the moment you set up the equipment and turn on the lights, you have changed the conditions under which the thing occurs. Christmas Eve is like this. It requires a particular kind of darkness, a particular kind of trust, and a particular willingness to go to sleep and find out in the morning. Children who have stayed awake attempting photographic documentation have, without exception, fallen asleep before anything worth photographing happened. This is not a coincidence.
If parents put the presents out, how do they know what to get?
This is the sharpest question you have asked, and I want you to sit with it. How do parents know? They pay attention all year. They listen when you do not think you are being listened to. They remember what you said in October. They notice what you linger over in stores and what you draw in the margins of your notebooks and what you ask about and then pretend you were not asking about. They stay up late and they wrap things carefully and they eat the cookies you left out, and they do all of this because they love you so much that they are willing to do something magical for you even without getting credit for it. Tell me, Eleanor. Does that sound like something that is not real? Does that sound like something that does not matter?
But then who is Santa? Is Santa just a story?
Santa began as a real man — Saint Nicholas of Myra, a bishop who lived seventeen hundred years ago and who gave away everything he had to people who needed it, anonymously, in the dark, without expecting to be thanked. He is the reason there is a story at all. The story grew because it was true in the way that matters most: it described something real about human beings — that generosity exists, that some people give without keeping score, that kindness can arrive unexpectedly and change a life. Stories that are true in that way do not stay in books. They get up and walk around. They become traditions. They become a man in a red suit on a sleigh. They become the thing your parents do at midnight in December because they want Christmas morning to feel like magic for you, which is itself an act of love so large that it requires a legend to contain it.
Brooke says believing in things that are not real is for babies.
Brooke is eight years old and trying to sound older, which is something eight-year-olds have done since the first eight-year-old decided that seeming sophisticated was preferable to admitting wonder. It is a very human thing to do and I hold no grudge against her for it. But I will tell you what I have learned from several centuries of reading letters: the people who stop believing in things they cannot photograph tend to live smaller lives than the people who don’t. Not because magic is real in the way that chairs are real. But because the capacity to believe — in generosity, in kindness arriving unexpectedly, in the idea that someone somewhere is paying attention to whether you are being good — that capacity is a muscle. And if you stop using it at eight because Brooke said something in the schoolyard, you will find it harder to use at thirty when you need it most. Believe carefully. Believe honestly. But do not let anyone tell you that wonder is for babies. Wonder is for people who are paying attention. You are clearly paying attention. That is why you wrote this letter instead of just accepting what Brooke said.
My mom made a face when I told her what Brooke said. What does the face mean?
The face means she was trying to decide how to tell you something true without taking something away from you before you were ready to let it go. It means she loves you. It means she has been Santa Claus for you, every December, in the dark, alone, for eight years, and that when Brooke’s name came up she felt the day approaching when you would know that, and she was not sure yet whether to feel proud or sad or both. The face means both. It almost always means both.
Are you going to answer my first question? The real answer?
I already did, Eleanor. Read it again.
I am real. The love that fills stockings and eats cookies and wraps presents at midnight and makes the face your mother made — that is real. The man who started it all, who gave in secret for the sheer goodness of giving — he was real. The feeling on Christmas morning that the world arranged itself on your behalf, just for one day — that is real. I am all of those things. I am none of them separately. I am what happens when human beings decide, generation after generation, that magic is worth maintaining.
You are eight years old and you asked an honest question and you deserve an honest answer. Here it is, as plainly as I know how to say it:
As long as you are kind, as long as you pay attention, as long as you leave cookies out and fall asleep hoping and wake up wondering — I will be real. The day you decide I am not is the day something in you that is worth keeping will get a little smaller. I am not asking you to be a baby about it. I am asking you to be brave about it. Those are different things. Brooke will figure that out eventually. You already know it. That is why you wrote to me instead of just agreeing with her.
Merry Christmas, Eleanor. The rain really does build character. Your father is right about that one, I’m afraid.
Thank you, Santa.
Your friend,
Eleanor Mae Whitfield
Portland, Oregon
P.S. I am still going to leave cookies out. Just so you know.
I know. I already have your house on the list. Shortbread, if your mother has the recipe. She does.
Is Santa Real?
