It’s sappy holiday story time! Are you ready? I’m ready….
So, Christmas at my house has always been a decidedly secular affair. In that way, I’m no different from a good portion of North America. My parents and I always loved decorating our tree, drinking cocoa, putting out the cookies and such, but the only time we ever arrived at a Christmas mass it was to hear my piano teacher play the service. I went to see one live nativity display as a teen because a friend’s cousin was playing one of the Wise Men. The only Jesus Christ I was listening to was probably the Superstar kind.
Santa Claus, however, was another matter entirely.
When I was around eight years old, my mother tried to gently break the news that Santa wasn’t a real person. (I have no idea why she waited so long.) I laughed it off because I’d figured out a few years beforehand that Santa had two distinct sets of handwriting and they looked strangely like mom and dad’s. Relieved that she had not crushed my snow-globe bubble of childhood fantasy, she asked, “Why didn’t you let us know once you figured it out?”
The reason was obvious, I thought. “Because I still wanted to get presents that said they were from Santa and elves,” I told her. “It’s my favorite part.”
My mom thought this was supremely endearing, and promised me that I would always get packages from Saint Nick. She kept her word, too; I’ve yet to have a December 25th go by where I didn’t get at least one box that was labeled “To: Emily. From: Santa.” And I wouldn’t have it any other way—it reminds me of the nights I spent up imagining that rustling branches were footsteps on the roof, of staring at my crayon clock and willing the hands forward with my brain, of gazing out my window for some sign without the moon to light the way. From where I’m standing, whether you subscribe to any given religion or not, Christmas is about believing. Not about what you believe, but the power of that belief. And those mislabeled packages were always there to nudge me in the right direction. To make certain I hadn’t forgotten.
There is one story that correctly captures that feeling, I’ve found, and it was one that my father read to me for many years on the night before Christmas: The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg.
I was too young to remember receiving my copy of the book, but I do remember the gift that accompanied it; a bell with its innards removed, so that it never made a sound when you shook it. This is important because of how the tale unfurls—a young boy whose love of Christmas is wearing thin gets taken with a train full of kids to the North Pole to see Santa Claus off before his all-night ride. Of all those children, Santa picks him to receive the First Gift of Christmas, and he choses the most genius present of all—a bell from Santa’s sleigh. He forgets it on the seat of said sleigh, but it arrives at his home the next morning in a small box. When he shakes it, his mother laments that it’s broken. She hears nothing… but he can hear it. His young sister and friends can hear it, though as they each get older, the sound fades away for them.
The bell only rings for those who believe.
And so I always told my parents I could hear that empty thing every time it shook. Science and logic informed me that this was not possible, and that was entirely irrelevant. That bell was more than holiday spirit to me—it was everything I believed in that I was expected to grow out of as I aged. Magic and miracles, optimism and adventure, harmonic coincidences and luck that couldn’t be made. I could keep them all because that bell was ringing, no matter what anyone said.
Over years of roaming and packing and taking on distance, the bell disappeared, and I always regretted not keeping better track of it. Less the loss of a thing, more the misplacing of a symbol. I wondered if I could ever regain it, or if this was simply what growing up was like for everyone. Along the way we break that special teapot, leave behind a charmed hat or scarf, drop a secret notebook in the mud and watch our scribblings run off the page and away from us.
Then, in the weeks leading up to Christmas of 2008, I was with my girlfriend in a grocery store. It was the first Christmas we’d ever spent away from our respective families and we were both desperately homesick, so we overcompensated by trying to “do Christmas” perfectly—cards out on time, shopping done weeks in advance, full tree with twinkly LED lights. In the store I found a display of chocolate mints, each set wrapped up in white and foresty green, tied with a red bow that had a single bell attached. I picked up one of the boxes and found that the bell made no sound. “Huh,” I said to girlfriend. “Weird that they decided to just put them there for show—they’re not real working bells.” I set the box down and walked away.
The next week I was more homesick and more downtrodden. Christmas was only days away and I thought the girlfriend and I were deserving of a pick-me-up of some kind. Those chocolate mints were calling, so I went back to the display and nabbed a box from the top.
The bell fastened to it by that red ribbon rang. I froze. Picked up another box. That bell rang too.
They all were ringing.
What a dead idiot I was. I had found the bell to Santa’s sleigh weeks ago, and being too sapped and cynical and grown up to notice, it had slipped through my fingers again.
Buy the Book
The Polar Express
My partner watched in equal parts amusement and horror as I proceeded to pick up each box individually and shake; there were easily a hundred or more to chose from on that table in the bakery section. I was muttering to myself like a proper crazy a person: “Oh no you don’t,” I said. “You got away from me twice now, and that’s all you get.” An employee or two passed by, but I think they knew better than to ask. I unstacked all their hard work, precariously perched boxes higher and higher to the side, testing them in turn. Each offered back a hollow, tinny jingle.
Until one of them didn’t.
I shook it again to be certain. Nothing. No working parts to produce that offending rattle. But if I strained my ears hard enough… the sound was there. The same one that I had insisted on to my parents as a little girl. The one that I had promised to hear, always.
While we drove home, I kept the box clutched to my chest. Eventually I was able to pry my hands off of it long enough to untie the ribbon and bell, which I then wrapped around branch of our Christmas tree, a bough close to the star at the top.
That’s its place every year now.
So I may never attend another Christmas service, or participate in a pageant dressed as half a camel, or comprehend the lyrics of half the carols I sing. But I still get packages from elves. And every time I see a reindeer up close, I have the pesky urge to ask them about the average wind velocity they encounter. And I’m fairly certain that a few of my favorite tree ornaments have lives of their own or entire worlds inside of them.
And I still hear Santa’s sleigh.
Originally published in December 2013.
Emmet Asher-Perrin begs you not to bring up the movie version of Polar Express, which is soul-sucking and deeply depressing to her. You can bug her on Twitter and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
Lovely post.
I remember telling my mother that I no longer believed in Santa Claus so she could stop putting his name on my Christmas gifts. I was about twelve and was quite upset that she hadn’t figured out that I had know about Santa for a while by that poiint. You know how obnoxious twelve year-olds can be when they think they have been underestimated.
That Christmas, and every Christmas after until she died, instead of coming from Santa, my gifts came from my favorite actors and singers. I was so touched that she knew which actors I had a crush on! It was so much fun to try to guess which Hollywood star would ‘give’ me my presents each year.
I’m throwing my mother’s idea out into the world – if you have children, and they are too old for Santa, but still need some special magic during the holidays, feel free to do as my mother did. I’m sure that your kids will love it as much as I did.
i love the story, Emily AP! and i love your suggestion/story Schweighsr! i’ve got two little ones at home so we have a heightened awareness of traditions and magic this year. i stopped believing when i saw my parents stuffing the family stockings (that was pretty much all Santa did except maybe for a box of clothes under the tree; every other gift was from mom and dad or other relatives). hoping to infuse a little magic into our daughter’s and son’s Christmas this year.
My mom never had “the Santa Talk” with me. The Sex talk, the divorce talk, the boys talk, the not boys talk, all of those she handled with aplomb, but the Santa one, she couldn’t bring herself to do. I figured it out while I was still in elementary school.
Finally, when I was 16 talking about what I wanted Santa to bring me, she sat me down and said “You do know there is no Santa, right?”
I looked at her and went “Shush, he’ll HEAR you”
I still get presents from Santa, and I’m 35.
Aeryl @@@@@ 3
Shed a tear reading your comment because, me too.
37 & still believe
That’s to bad that you don’t like the movie. I know it’s silly, but I still watch the thing each year. It helps to put me in the spirit. Also, the over the topness of some scenes is rather amusing to watch.
For some reason, you in a cammel costume reminded me of the three wise guys.
Lovely!
I entered my daughter’s preschool class on Friday just as her teacher was finishing reading “The Polar Express”. My girl was so enraptured she didn’t even notice me sitting down next to her. And when the teacher produced a bell on a ribbon for each child, saying she couldn’t figure out what to do with this bag of bells that didn’t ring but maybe the kids would figure out something to do with them, well, the look on each child’s face purely captured the Christmas spirit.
My 8-year-old believes in Santa as firmly as she believes in dragons, and I hope that lasts as long as possible!
When I wasn’t quite three, my grandmother on my dad’s side visited us for Christmas for the first and only time. (We usually visited her in Cambridge in the summer, and she died when I was nine.) She and my dad brought my stocking full of presents to my bedroom late that night, and I remember distinctly their voices as they checked with each other “Is she asleep?” – “Yes”.
I also remember, just as distinctly, my lack of surprise: after they had gone out and closed the door, I reached down to feel the lovely lumpy feel of s stocking full of wrapped presents, and fell back to sleep with pleased satisfaction that it really was Christmas now.
I knew Father Christmas wasn’t real at the age of two. I am still impressed with how cynical I was.
Roll on a few years and I was a sporadic babysitter for the younger children of various friends of my parents. It’s December 1985 and a regular rings me up to ask if I can babysit her youngest, a sweet kid just turned eight, for an afternoon at the cinema: he wants to go see Santa Claus The Movie again, she cannot face sitting through it for a second time, but he has a December birthday and this is what he wants for his birthday treat. She will obviously pay for both cinema ticket and popcorn money as well as my usual hourly fee: I have zero interests in the movie as a movie but as babysitting gigs go, this appears to be an excellent one. I expect to have to go pick him up and take him to the cinema, but in the end, his two older sisters need a lift to a party and so he, his two older sisters, and their mum pick me up and we get delivered to the cinema entrance.
All the way to the cinema in the car, the boy is bouncing and telling me about the movie and trying very sweetly to avoid spoilers because he knows I haven’t seen it yet, and his two older sisters are getting increasingly exasperated, and when he tells me (for about the third time) that it really is the real true story of Santa Claus, his second-eldest sister snaps “No, it’s not!”
Her older sister snaps at her to be quiet, and their mother says something calm and comfortable, but it’s clear that this has been going on for a while – possibly ever since he’d seen the movie the first time – and they are all a bit at the end of their tether with this just-turned-8 who both still believes in Santa Claus and believes this Hollywood movie is a biopic.
We get out of the car. We go into the cinema together. We are standing in line to get tickets, or popcorn, when he looks up at me with this incredibly mischievous insider-grin on his face. “I know it’s not really true,” he says.
I love a little cynic. Sorry.
That’s a wonderful story. My mom still likes to label her gifts “from Santa” when she gives them to us as well, and we started doing the same thing for her. I have mixed feelings on the whole “Santa” thing, but it’s still fun.
I like the movie. The graphics are . . . not great – I don’t know why they decided to go with that CGI, 3D, almost-but-clearly-not-realistic enough animation for it instead of more conventional 2D animation. Maybe it had something to do with the final gasps of the Disney Renaissance 2D films dying out. But even then it’s not totally bad – I think the scenes with Glacier Gulch look pretty great.
Fun fact – the black girl in it is the singer Tinashe, age 9.