Believe

                It takes me off guard every year—one of my piano students reaches the age of questioning and they trust me to be straight with them. “Is Santa for real?”  Whoa!  I feel like a deer in headlights.  It’s not my place to end the magic…if they question it this year, then it’s probably their last chance to enjoy the wonder of reindeer and elves before they slip to the other side—the grown-up side—where things are a lot less fun.

                My game plan usually involves answering questions with other questions:  Do you think Santa is real?  Why do you think he might not be? What do your parents say?   I finish by telling them what I told my daughter one year, “Once you stop believing, Santa can’t bring you presents anymore.  They’ll all be from your parents after that.  We better get back to your piano lesson.”  Bullet dodged!

                The good news is that there is still plenty of wonder and awe in the Christmas story that we don’t have to stop believing just because we are older—that God would love us enough to send His only Son and let Him suffer to save us, that Jesus would love us so much that He would relinquish life as King of the Universe and become a vulnerable human baby, that the groundwork was laid out from the beginning to create the perfect time and place and conditions for the prophesies to play out, that there was a human girl selfless enough to risk the  stigma and punishment of being an unwed mother so she could do God’s will, that God chose to include the humblest of our society to welcome His Son.  Yes, if we believe, there is wonder and awe beyond anything we can fathom.