6 minute read

And so, here we are. We made it. The week of the winter solstice and Christmas. As the saying goes, we have turned the year. Light is making its return. A year has passed and it feels like mere weeks since we were here last. So little feels different on the bulletins - still resounding bad news about illness, business closures, hospitals under pressure and ever-rising Covid numbers. It’s hard to believe we are heading into the third year of this - it feels that the daily tally of numbers has been hard-wired into our psyches now. Each afternoon, we wait on them, we wait on how they direct us to feel. On how much to worry, on how much to stay apart, reduce, stay small.

But no! But the thing is this: our spirit is strong. We can override the oppression of these feelings. How we choose to feel is all within us.

I am writing this whilst listening to Celine Dion sing O Holy Night because I love it and it reminds me of years singing carols when I was in my Catholic school. I turn it up and belt it out, sounding nothing remotely like Celine and it makes me happy! It makes me feel Christmassy. It makes me remember too when I lived in London in my 20’s, and one of my best pals came to visit me around Christmas time and after going for some festive lunchtime drinks in the bar near me, we stumbled upon a carol service in a tiny church on the way home, so we went in to look. On entry, we were greeted warmly, handed mulled wines and ushered up onto a balcony of the crowded, candlelit church (protestant, I think, as the Catholics weren’t so keen on free-flowing wine).

My friend and I sang our hearts out. At the top of our voices, in our slightly fuzzy, tipsy state we sang every carol and Christmas song. We put our arms around each other, eyes wet with emotion, and I swear I’ve never felt so Christmassy (well, until I became Santa Claus). It was a glorious moment. And that’s what it’s all about for me - moments. A selection of small, glorious, open-hearted moments. To me, the Christmas spirit is about a generosity of the soul. It’s about being open to it as well as whoever is around you - in whatever way they show up.

Yes, Christmas can bring hard memories. People are grieving - many more this year and last. Sometimes family gatherings can be complicated and less than festive. Many people are alone. But bring it back to the moment and know moments pass. They pass quickly - good ones and bad. Nothing ever stays the same. The fact that life is fluid and ever-changing is a great realisation.

To me, Christmas spirit is a willingness to see wonder. But to see a wonder in the small things. To see what is good around you. To see generosity, not consumerism, to see cheer and charity - to see love.

It all comes from love, you see. It may be a season warped over time by human flaws, too focused on money and greed. Damaged by perfectionism and showing off, divorced from what it really represents - and that is to spend time with the ones you love, while you have them, and to manifest that love and celebrate those bonds via sharing meals and gifting one another.

Look at Santa Claus. An ever-enduring effort to create magic for our children, so that they can believe in something unseen. In something beyond them, something based on story, something to capture imaginations. It is the greatest conspiracy of humanity - this conspiracy of love. Does this not set up our kids for something so important? To make love tangible. To make it felt. To believe in something beyond them?

Yes, it’s often about X-Boxes and bikes, but to see the sparkle in their eyes while they are still believers is actual, literal magic. It is wordless and magnificent. Life can, for one night, feel magical.

And we do that. Generations of us perpetuate it because we love other people. And it is beautiful.
We all do that - all the rushing and queueing and list-making and timings and stuffing of stockings and turkeys - we do all that because we love other people. And that’s all it is. Christmas is love.

It’s not about what’s in the present, it’s that there is a present. It’s not that your house is Insta-worthy, it’s that there is a house. It’s not that your partner is annoying, your family are tricky, it’s that they exist. And that some people don’t exist anymore, and that you loved them. I heard someone say once that grief is love wearing a heavy coat. You see, it’s all love.

One of my favourite Christmas feelings (as well as singing along to Celine Dion) is the feeling I get when I read Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, the real-life letter from an 8-year-old to the editor of The Sun Newspaper in 1897. To me, this is it. This is the spirit of it. It’s below - I hope you enjoy it.
And I wish you well, dear friends…

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Francis B. Church
Editor of the New York Sun 1897

Wishing a peaceful, restful Christmas to you and yours, from all of us at Heyday.

Ellie Balfe, December 2021