Column - We're Still on the Nice List

It's been four months since my wife and I debated whether to pour the cold eggnog of reality on the last embers of my 7-year-old daughter's belief in Santa Claus.

I wrote about our quandary in August. Maybe you remember. My wife was reading “Superfudge” by Judy Blume to Tess when they arrived at Chapter 10. That's where we find out that “Santa is just an idea” that savvy kids figure out despite parental play acting.

My wife wanted to go ahead, read the chapter and let the sugar cookies fall where they may. I was for skipping it and preserving the merry mythology a few Kodak moments longer.

Tess will figure things out on her own, soon enough.

Even in those sunny days of summer, I got lots of advice from readers. Most took Santa's side. Some were emphatic. One reader, Jo Dixon, deployed three nos, three nevers and three evers in all-caps as she urged us to resist bubble-bursting.

“P.S. ... don't do it. ... please,” she wrote.

Yes, Jo, there is still a Santa Claus, as far as Tess and her little sister Ella are concerned.

Chapter 10 was skipped. Sorry Judy. Our housetop is still ready and waiting for reindeer paws.

And now that Santa has gone from being a lively debate to a lighted plastic beacon half-buried in snow in our front yard, I'm glad we get at least one more Christmas on the believers' list.

“With Santa Claus, you are trying to enrich the child's life by sharing something that you both enjoy,” Charles Smith, a Kansas State University expert in child development, said in a news release this month. “Santa Claus embodies the whole idea of the Christmas season as the time of caring, togetherness and magic.”

“Dear Prudence,” advice columnist for the online magazine Slate, also says there's no harm in sticking to the Santa story. “Telling your children about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy is not lying - it's sprinkling a little magic dust on childhood,” she wrote. Amen.

Our household could use a little magic dust. And these days, I know we're not alone.

After enduring Tiger and his sleigh-full of hookups and White House party crashers and John and Kate and Balloon Boy and all the other cringe-inducing servings of fruitcake, it's comforting to have an old-school celebrity like Santa around. I'll let him sort out the naughty and nice list. But with all that “reality,” I'll gladly take a dose of fur-trimmed fantasy. With bells on.

Speaking of lists, Tess wants an iPod. Ella wants a Zhu Zhu Pet. I bet the jolly old guy comes through - again.

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