I tend to be a groaner and an eye-roller this time of year. The tie-ins to Christianity don’t particularly bother me, but the focus on gross commercialism really does. Because I tend to be what most people would consider a humbug, it should come as very little surprise that I don’t believe in Santa Claus.
I never have. Mom and Dad had that conversation with me at a very early age, and I was the kid who got in trouble for telling the other kids there was no Santa Claus. There wasn’t any malice in it; I was just a very honest child.
My friend, who is in his 30’s, does believe in Santa. Now, I’m all for to-each-his-own, but I do expect the same courtesy. When an off-handed comment turns into a heated magico-religious debate, there’s obviously a miscommunication somewhere.
Suffice to say, I don’t understand how practicing magic and working with gods and goddesses means that I should believe in Santa.
The thing is, I don’t believe in magic, or in pagan gods. I don’t have to believe in them. I’ve experienced them. You believe in something you’ve never had experience with. I’ve experienced the workings of magic, and I’ve experienced, quite viscerally if not physically, gods. I’ve never experienced anything that would lead me to think that there’s a fat guy in a sleigh drawn by deer all over the world in a night. I have experienced gravity, and wind-drag, and running into a wall. The experience of all these things only reinforces the dis-belief in Santa.
Do we believe that the Sun will rise in the east(ish) every day? No. We have experienced that it has risen every day and so we expect that it will do the same. You can believe that it’ll rise in the west, or not at all, and that doesn’t make it so.
What do you think? Does it make me less of a magical person that I don’t share the worldview that “If you just BELIEVE, anything can happen?”
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