The Santa That Never Left: On Believing, Not-Believing, and Believing Again
On Christmas, community, and the magic that outlives belief
For Faith Mark, who taught us how to make magic.
Born Into Community
Growing up in a family of nine children was loud, hectic, chaotic—and sometimes breathtakingly magical.
Being the eighth of nine meant I didn’t grow up learning independence first. I was born into a community. Into noise and negotiation, into personalities colliding and coexisting, into learning how to move with others rather than apart from them. It turns out that being raised among so many different ages and temperaments teaches you something essential about life: how to navigate community with a kind of ease that can’t really be learned later.
The Quiet Hum of Poverty
There is something else I grew up with that is harder to admit, even now.
Poverty.
I didn’t always fully realize how poor we were. As children do, I lived inside what was normal to me. And yet, looking back, I can feel how it was always there—underneath everything—the quiet awareness of what we didn’t have, of money stretched thin, of adults carrying burdens we couldn’t yet name.
And I think this is at least part of why it has been so hard for me, even as an adult, to give up the language and orientation of hope.
Hope wasn’t a philosophy in our house.
It was a survival strategy.
A thin but steady thread we held onto when circumstances felt immovable.
A beacon that, at times, softened the sharp edges of scarcity.
The Time of Year I Definitely Didn’t Feel Poor
And yet, there was one time of year when that feeling loosened its grip.
Christmas.
Christmas was the time I definitely didn’t feel poor.
My mother was a master at creating Christmas magic. To this day, I’m not quite sure how my parents managed it. Even with so many children and so little money, there always seemed to be an abundance of presents under the tree. My mother and father would stay up all night on Christmas Eve, wrapping gifts into the early hours so that when we woke up, a wonderland greeted us.
They didn’t just wrap presents.
They wrapped the year in wonder.
And woven through all of it was belief.
Not abstract belief.
Not religious belief.
Belief in Santa.
That someone good and generous might be on his way to us.
Sacred Rituals
There were rituals.
Sacred ones.
On Christmas Eve, we were allowed to open one present—always new pajamas. We baked a birthday cake for Jesus and sang “Happy Birthday” before heading to bed. Before sleep, we gathered around my mother to carefully craft our letters to Santa. She told us we were allowed to ask him anything—not just for gifts, but questions, curiosities, wonderings.
And every year, Santa wrote back.
Those letters were often works of art. I wish I had kept them. Every question was answered. Every child was mentioned. Each of us was acknowledged for what we had been through that year—small victories, hard moments, quiet efforts seen and named.
Somehow, my mother held all nine of us in her awareness and reflected us back with care, humor, and love through Santa’s voice—teaching us that curiosity was not only allowed, but cherished.
We didn’t just believe in Santa.
We were believed in by Santa.
Breakfast on the Beach
The year I turned eight, we moved to Florida. Christmas looked different there. The weather was warmer, the air softer, the light entirely new.
That first Florida Christmas, my mother packed all of us into the car. My parents loaded electric frying pans, groceries, and coffee, and we drove to a local beach with a pavilion that had electrical outlets. And there, on Christmas Eve morning, we cooked a homemade breakfast on the beach while the waves rolled in.
It was truly magical.
Eating pancakes and eggs with sand under our feet and ocean wind in our hair became our new ritual. That morning launched a tradition, breakfast on the beach every Christmas Eve.
Over the years, the tradition has changed, as traditions do. No one cooks at the beach anymore. The electric frying pans have been replaced with donut boxes, coffee, and sometimes egg sandwiches from favorite local spots. But the heart of it hasn’t changed at all.
The magic of gathering on the morning of Christmas Eve remains.
My family in Florida continues it now. My siblings, their children, and their children’s children all gather on the beach the morning before the beautiful chaos of Christmas Day. A pause before presents. Community before commotion.
I’ve even kept the tradition in New York in cold weather, bundled up, cooking outdoors, or simply sharing breakfast under the winter sky, honoring that same thread of magic in a different climate. Because once a ritual takes root, it doesn’t depend on weather or menu. It depends on love.
And the magic that Faith Mark created there on that shoreline planted seeds of love and faith that continue to grow in all of us today.
The Details That Made It Real
The presents from Santa were always wrapped in plain tissue paper. On the back of many of them was a seal stating the gift had been inspected by Elf Number ___. Reading the outside of the presents was almost as important as opening them.
Proof that care had been taken.
That someone had paid attention.
Christmas Morning Choreography
Christmas morning itself was its own choreography.
We weren’t allowed into the living room right away. My parents needed time to get their coffee ready and light the tree. Of course, we each had a stocking to keep us busy, always an apple, an orange, candy, and little trinkets. Enough to hold us until the moment arrived.
When we finally entered the living room together, it felt like stepping into another world. Lights glowing. Presents everywhere. A true wonderland.
We took turns opening gifts, one at a time. Everyone watched. Everyone stayed present for what was unwrapped and how excited each person got. No rushing. No tearing ahead. Just attention, delight, and shared joy.
George Bailey & a Different Kind of Wealth
Christmas carols filled the house, and more often than not, It’s a Wonderful Life played in the background.
George Bailey’s story made us all cry. Every year. The man who believed he had failed, only to discover he was rich in ways that mattered far more than money. I think that story worked its way into our bones. His lack of money, paired with the revelation of his wealth of love and connection, somehow made us feel richer as well.
Because, in truth, during Christmas, we were.
Christmas didn’t erase poverty.
It suspended it.
For a few precious days, scarcity lost its authority.
When Santa “Ended”
I’ve often joked that finding out about Santa was the end of my childhood in many ways.
The day I learned “Santa isn’t real” felt like a small grief. Not dramatic. Just…quietly devastating. It wasn’t only the man in the red suit vanishing. It was the feeling that magic had been based on a lie. That I had been foolish for believing so wholeheartedly in something unseen.
For a long time, I thought that was the truth:
Santa isn’t real.
Full stop. Case closed. Grow up.
But life has a way of circling back.
Years later, watching my mother’s rituals live on in my siblings, and then watching my sister Annie weave that same wonder for Zach, something softened.
And the question rose again, not from a child this time, but from inside my adult heart:
Was Santa not real?
Or was he exactly as real as we allowed him to be?
Santa, Reimagined
As a grown woman who has danced with money and the lack of it many times throughout my life, I understand now that Santa was never meant to be only a literal figure. A man with reindeer didn’t arrive each year bearing proof of abundance.
But the essence of Santa?
That was very real.
Santa is generosity without evidence.
Santa is love working overtime behind the scenes.
Santa is imagination refusing to surrender to circumstance.
So when I hear:
Santa isn’t real,
another truth rises gently beside it:
Or maybe he is exactly as real as our faith allows him to be.
The magic of those years didn’t disappear.
It rippled forward.
Sisters, Questions, and the Magic That Traveled
For most of my adult life, I’ve shared a home with my sister Annie. Sometimes it was a two-family house, sometimes just the two of us and her son, Zach. I didn’t have children of my own in this life, but I have been deeply lucky in another way. Through my sister, I’ve been woven into my nephew Zach’s life from the beginning.
Like our mother before her, Annie is a master at Christmas.
I watched her sit with Zach year after year as he wrote his letter to Santa. She would tell him, just like our mother told us, that he could ask Santa anything. Any question at all.
For Zach, whom I’ve always called the Question Man (and sometimes still do), this was like unleashing a dam in a river. The questions poured out, curious, earnest, philosophical, funny. Big questions. Small ones. Questions about the world, about Santa, about life itself.
And like our mother, Annie answered every single one.
Her letters back from Santa were magical and generous, full of wonder, joy, and humor. Each letter carried the unmistakable feeling of being seen, known, and delighted in.
We played the carols.
We watched It’s a Wonderful Life.
And just like us, Zach grew to love George Bailey.
The Legendary Light Bulbs
As I decorated my small house this year, memories flooded in.
I remembered the year my father emerged from the shed holding two regular light bulbs, painted with flat light pink house paint, not even remotely a Christmas color, tied together with Christmas ribbon.
He stood there beaming, clearly expecting applause.
The room went quiet for half a second.
Then his pride cracked into laughter, and we all followed—howling at the fact that they were, quite honestly, the ugliest Christmas ornaments we had ever seen.
My sister still has those light bulbs. She puts them on her tree every year, toward the back, of course.
And maybe that’s the real Santa, showing up with what he has, wrapped in love, and somehow still delivering joy.
Santa Still Comes
Ironically, as I’m writing this, I can hear the annual tradition of the local volunteer firemen outside my door. Every year, they drive through the streets of my town with Santa riding on a fire truck. If you hear them and step outside—whether you have children with you or not, they stop.
Santa climbs down and hands out candy canes and little trinkets.
No questions asked.
No proof required.
I stand there listening, the sirens, the laughter drifting through the cold air—and I think of George Bailey, realizing he was rich beyond measure. Not because of money. But because of people. Because of the community.
This is the same wealth.
Parents staying up all night.
Sisters creating magic for each other.
Aunties standing in with devotion.
Neighbors showing up for neighbors.
And somewhere in all of it, I can almost hear Zach’s questions still flowing, proof that wonder, once welcomed, never really stops asking to be met.
Santa never left.
He just learned how to travel differently, sometimes through family, sometimes through ritual, sometimes on a fire truck rolling down a familiar street, always carried by people willing to keep the magic alive.
And the magic that Faith Mark created all those years ago, around trees, in kitchens, and on sandy Christmas Eve shorelines, planted seeds of love and faith that continue to grow in us still.
So now I hold the question lightly:
Is Santa real?
And my answer is simple:
As real as we let him be.
Ahhh. The magic of Santa.
Roars of love,
Jennifer
