The Gift of Discovery

“I’m looking forward to Christmas. It’s sentimental, I know, but I still really like it.” I play Tim Minchin’s “White Wine in the Sun” over and over again this time of year. Christmas is, for me, a time for family, white lights and greenery all over my house, baking batch after batch of my grandmother’s sugar cookies, finding thoughtful gifts for people I care about, and dusting off my collection of Santa Claus figures. For most people, I would suppose that Santa is an icon for believing in something magical. For me, it is a reminder of the benefit of not only researching questions but also of allowing others to do the same for themselves when they are ready to do so.

In December of 1975, I was six years old. One day, I could not help noticing the cover of a magazine on our end table. I can still almost envision the title emblazoned across the magazine in large bold letters–”What to Tell Your Children When They Ask You If There Is a Santa Claus” (While I am fairly certain I do not remember the exact title, I remember the gist.) “How could this be?” I asked myself.  First of all, I was uncertain why any child would bother asking.  Secondly, I knew that Santa Claus was real.  How else would my new microscope be deposited under the tree while my parents serenaded me with their chorus of snores from the adjacent room?  How would the Lifesavers Storybook find its way into my stocking if it were not for the white gloved man in a fuzzy red suit?

Before then, there had been no question, no doubt. I was happy to just blindly accept what I knew must be true.  My eyes stared at the cover, which seemed to float in mid-air as my white-knuckled tiny hands grasped the magazine, breath catching in my throat, all the while knowing somehow that my world would change if I chose to open it.  For several days, my mind kept going back to the coffee-stained and cigarette ash strewn table next to the well worn orange plaid wool chair, wondering if I had merely imagined it.  Finally, resistance was futile.  The truth must be had.

Like a prepubescent boy prowling around trying to catch a glimpse of his father’s porn collection, I patiently waited until the rare moment that I was alone in the house.  With shaking fingers and a sense of doom, overshadowed only by my curiosity and the desire to engage in covert detective operations, I breathlessly fumbled until I opened to the page that would at last give me the truth I so desperately did not want to know.  I may have been oddly precocious, but at only six years old, it took me a while to read and process the information in front of me.  Indeed, there was no such thing as Santa Claus.  I argued with myself until the reality made itself at home in my head and cooked itself a nice dinner before settling down for a much needed nap under the warm and comforting cover of reason.  I was devastated, but not surprised by my discovery that indeed an aged man with a snow white beard did not deliver my Christmas gifts each year.

I set up a little test for one of the other gift-bearing creatures in my life, the tooth fairy.  The next time I lost a tooth, I placed it under my pillow but didn’t tell my parents my secret.  My suspicions were correct; when I awoke the next morning, the tooth was still there.  I still wanted my gift, so I told my mother that the tooth fairy forgot to visit me.  Miraculously, after she went into my room, the tooth had been replaced with a quarter.  My tenure as a paranormal investigator began at the ripe old age of six, although I didn’t realize it at the time.

My wisdom remained concealed for five or six years until my mother thought it was time that I knew the truth and somberly delivered the news to me.  I acted surprised when she told me, at the same time wondering just how stupid she really thought I must be.  I struggled to hide my knowledge and skepticism so well over the years that I grew fearful that it had made me look gullible and naïve.

My parents chose to encourage belief in Santa Claus. I certainly do not fault them for that, and know they got a great deal of pleasure out of playing Santa each Christmas. I also think, at least for me, that there was greater value in making the discovery on my own rather than being told the truth.  Learning that adults are not always truthful, regardless of their good intentions, and that I had the power to weed through the information in order to arrive at my own truths was a lesson that I am happy to have had at an early age. This incident was the birth of my skepticism, rational thought, and desire to search for answers on my own. That carelessly placed magazine may have been the best gift I ever received.

All I had to do to in order to continue to blindly embrace mythology was to avoid opening that magazine—to avoid looking for the truth.  That would have been the convenient solution to my dilemma, and my childhood would have probably been just a tiny bit happier, at least for a couple of years. When asking some of life’s biggest questions, I sometimes feel like that six year old child in front of that magazine. The answers contained within its pages are sometimes inconvenient and lacking magic, but more often open up a world of even more fascinating possibilities.  Reality is awe inspiring, and making decisions based upon good, accurate information is to our benefit as human beings.

When we give a gift, we typically wrap it, allowing the recipient the experience of unwrapping it to discover the contents on his or her own.  Part of the joy is in the moment of anticipation, of wondering what is under the brightly colored paper and ribbons. Perhaps we should, more often, provide people with this same experience when we provide information.  I cannot help but wonder if the skeptical community sometimes misses the mark in this regard, as there is value, I think, in guiding rather than insisting, in opening up doors politely instead of merely slamming them forcefully, in questioning rather than telling, in teaching how to think instead of teaching what to think. While my story is only an anecdote from my childhood, I know that my worldview changed dramatically by being afforded an opportunity to think rather than being given an answer I didn’t want to have. And in spite of the inevitable conclusion, I still really like Christmas and the magic of reality I found all by myself.

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