On Christmas, everything at our house comes from Santa. No matter how old you are, all your presents are signed, "From Santa." And you at least pretend to believe that a fat old guy in a red suit drops them all off on Christmas Eve.
Well, that's not quite true. Small children who have only recently grasped the fun-of-giving-and-wrapping and have forced their dad to take them to the Dollar Store to shop for gifts--well, they like to sign their presents themselves. Although they are the ones who still believe that there is a real Santa who comes to the house around 2 am Christmas Eve. (I know it's 2 am. I'm up.)
But the stuff from Mom and Dad is always signed from Santa.
This is a tradition that started with Fred's family of origin. Everything was from Santa, or from Santa with variations--"St. Louis Santa," for example, for the St. Louis grandparents. I suspect this was less a belief statement than a way to simplify gift-giving for my mother-in-law, who had six kids. "Santa" is a nice short word to scribble on all those cards. And if one kid didn't get as many presents as another, well, hey, go complain to Santa.
I myself was not allowed to believe in Santa as a child. My mother told me there was no Santa when I was about three years old, I think. Maybe she would not have done so if she thought I'd still remember it and be blogging about it forty years later.
What I remember is sitting in our small, slanting upstairs spare bedroom while my mother got out the box of Christmas decorations. I was jabbering away about Santa coming, having heard about this from other children? TV? No idea. My mother said, in my memory, "There is no Santa." I was shocked, I recall, shocked and upset. I wanted there to be a Santa.
My next step was to inform the neighbor children that, guess what? There's no Santa! which undoubtedly did not endear me to their mothers.
My mother's explanation of this is that she didn't believe it was good for children to think that the family allowed/encouraged a stranger to come into the house like that. Something like Maureen O'Hara's character in the original Miracle on 34th Street, where she doesn't want her kid to believe in fantasies, because reality is a safer place to be.
This is how I remember it. It might or might not have happened this way. Anyway, I grew up with Christmas gifts signed by actual people. Being a natural worrier, I always worried--even as a kid, opening underwear from Great-aunt Bertha--that they were giving me more than I gave them, that I wasn't doing enough. No wonder signing everything from Santa comes as a relief to me.
