I don't remember being tragically scarred when I found out that he wasn't real, but being lied to doesn't necessarily make me feel all that great.
The part of it that really kills me is the extent my family took with lying to get me to believe he was real. I am the "special surprise" of the family, with the sibling nearest to me in age being 10 years older than I am. So, naturally, my siblings knew the truth....there's no such thing as Santa Claus.
But anyway, here is the story of how I was effectively convinced that the jolly man in red actually existed.
I can't remember how old I was, but I must have been very young because both my brother and sister were still living in my parents' house. Our Christmas tree was always placed carefully in the living room so that the lights would glow out the front window and could be seen from the road. Most inconvenient for my parents was the fact that my bedroom was RIGHT NEXT to the living room, and since my bedroom used to be my father's office it didn't have a door on it, some stealth action had to be taken. Who did my parents enlist for these covert operations...you guessed it...none other than my evil sister.
She lured me in with the promise of fun girl time hanging out with her upstairs in her room. "It will be like our own little sleepover upstairs...we can watch out my window to see if we can find Santa and his reindeer." Lying bitch. Way to take advantage of a poor innocent believer.
At this age I idolized my sister (big mistake)...she rarely paid any attention to me, unless it was for some gain of hers, but I never noticed that at my young age, so this "special attention" caught me hook, line, and sinker. So, as bedtime came around on Christmas Eve, even though I was too excited to sleep, I went upstairs and crawled in bed with my big sister. She knew I wasn't asleep, so she asked me to look out her window to see if I could see Santa. I didn't see anything, so she got up, pretended to be super-excited, and pointed off in the distance, "THERE HE IS! THERE HE IS!" To which I replied, "WHERE?? WHERE??!!!" Sister: "See...over there...don't you see Rudolph's nose flashing?"
Now, for those of you that haven't already figured this out...what my sister was pointing to...was none other than a FUCKING RADIO TOWER with a red light flashing on top. That's right, that lovely red light that beacons out, in order to keep airplanes from running into it. But, go figure, I believed every word she fucking said. And, of course I told my parents and brother the whole story the next morning when we were opening presents.
I must say that it is a funny story to tell, if nothing else. However, I do look back and cringe at how blindly I believed what everyone was telling me. They say that so much of a person is shaped by experiences they encounter in their youth...well, I for one completely believe that to be entirely true. I'm not as gullible, I'm not as trusting...I find it near impossible to follow anything blindly. Probably explains part of why I don't believe in God I suppose. So it begs the question, is the little white lie we call "St. Nick" really such a sweet and innocent lie after all?
Song of the day: "White Christmas" Corporal Blossom (my type of Christmas song)
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