DECEMBER 10, 2024 – The power of rationalization is often underestimated. Over my lifetime, I’ve observed people undergo the most extraordinary mental gymnastics to justify taking an easier but inferior path over the more difficult but superior one. Or simply to hide the truth, either from others or, more often, from themselves.
Some rationalizations have RATIONALIZATION! written all over them. For now I’ll omit references to über-rationalizations I’ve heard from people who are alive and well and mention a classic example uttered by someone who is as dead as Jacob Marley: my mother.
The occasion was up at the lake, exactly one week after Mother had argued with me about putting the dock in at Björnholm so that she could launch her 13-foot canoe. She had advanced to an age [1] where her eccentricities and idiosyncrasies were heavily concentrated. In that particular encounter I lacked the perspective to grasp what was really going on: she was expressing her frustration with everything and everyone that stood in the way of her reliving the favorite experience of her youth, which was being on the water and in control of her own wheel, tiller, paddle—her own helm. On that occasion I was arguing for what was most “rational,” that is, driving or hiking down to our place, where the lake was more accessible; where it would be far easier to launch her canoe . . . and most critically for me, would eliminate the need for me to spend half a day installing the dock at Björnholm, then another half day removing it at the end of the season. The argument ended in impasse. I didn’t agree to install the dock, and Mother refused to launch her canoe from our place down the shore. With the weekend over, my wife and I left for home back in the cities.
The next weekend we returned. When I hiked over to the old cabin at Björnholm to say hello to my parents, who at that time were spending most of the summer at the lake, I noticed Mother’s canoe was not where it was usually stored—overturned up on the bank by the dock area (back in the years when the dock was installed).
When I asked Mother about it, she shocked my shoes off: “I sold it.”
“You what? . . . But why?”
“It was taking up too much space,” she said, giving me the ultimate of rationalizations. There was no way on earth—or at least on the part of the earth covered by Björnholm’s 68 acres and long stretch of lakeshore—that a 13-foot aluminum canoe could “take up too much space.”
It was the only time I’d witnessed Mother doing or saying anything out of spite, and it shook me to the core. In an instant I realized the terrible insensitivity and intense selfishness I had displayed the week before—much as Scrooge behaved before his encounter with the three spirits . . .
Which brings ’round Christmas, which brings us Santa, who brought me my first direct experience in “rationalization.” Mother, who did her very best to instill Christmas cheer in our hearts and minds once Thanksgiving was behind us, announced that she was taking my younger sister and me to visit Santa at the Anoka City Hall. For me, of course, Santa was big deal, even after I’d overheard a couple of my fellow first-graders telling another classmate on the playground that Santa was “your parents.” I’d had my independent suspicion, but now the possibility morphed into probability, and I found it unsettling.
I still wasn’t sure, however. As would any normal kid, I wanted to keep believing in Santa. In the first place, it was a warm, colorful concept, supported by a million images, stories, songs, Christmas ornaments, and so on. With great relish I’d worked with all those images to create in my imagination an elaborate vision of Santa’s workshop, house . . . his whole existence. And from a purely pragmatic standpoint, Santa was an independent source of presents. If that source merged with my parents, I reasoned, I’d receive only half as many presents. All this boiled down to keeping Santa alive and well the best I could for as long as possible.
The big day arrived when Mother loaded Jenny and me into the car and drove the short distance to city hall on the other side of the Rum River. Santa was seated on his makeshift red and white throne in the community room just inside the entrance to the building. The line of other moms and kids stretched the length of the room and spilled into the hallway. Smiling organizers, all decked out in cheerful attire, shepherded us along. Mother knew most of them and exchanged small talk, as Jenny held her hand and I silently practiced my request, to-wit: a battery-operated car like the one my friend Dave Holland had.
As we got closer, so did my ability to examine Santa for authenticity. I didn’t like what I saw. First, his eyes, nose and exposed facial skin wasn’t old or wrinkled enough. I figured Santa was somewhere around my grandpa’s age, and I knew that grandpa’s skin looked a lot older than my dad’s skin. Santa’s skin was way too smooth for a guy whose beard was as white as snow. Then there was the outfit. Santa’s was way too thin, I thought, to keep him warm, especially in a place as cold as Minnesota, let alone the North Pole. And the wide black belt around his waist . . . In the first place, his waist wasn’t big enough to shake like a “bowful of jelly,” and the belt was . . . plastic. Santa was way too old for plastic. I was certain his belt should be leather.
Soon it was our turn. Jenny wasn’t sure of the whole operation and withheld a smile. My skepticism was mounting, and when I saw the thin white gloves on Santa’s hands reach out beckoning us toward him, I wondered two things at once: why was he wearing them indoors, yet how could such thin gloves keep his hands warm outdoors? When the photographer’s assistant directed me to stand next to Santa’s right foot, I looked down and . . .
. . . I was stunned. Santa’s big black boots weren’t boots at all. They were regular black shoes with what appeared as stovepipes around his lower legs. It was all a big fake!
After we imparted our requests and received our candy canes, Jenny and I followed Mother out of the community hall. She didn’t buy the Polaroid photo. She knew well enough that Dad would’ve frowned at the cost.
At the supper table that evening, Dad asked about our visit with Santa. I felt conflicted. I wanted to blurt out the evidence I saw that Santa, or at least the version we met, was a big fake, but on the other hand, if I revealed my deep skepticism over the whole myth, I knew I risked losing the benefit of going along with the story. Besides, I didn’t want to wreck things for Jenny. I kept my mouth shut. More than that, I convinced myself that despite what I’d seen with my own lying eyes, Santa was real after all. Or more likely, he was an official surrogate to cover for Santa, who must be working around the clock as he made last minute preparations for his upcoming worldwide delivery tour. Yes, of course! I told myself. Santa had to have a million stand-ins. How else would all of this work? How could Santa make sure everything was running smoothly at the North Pole, yet take the time to visit kids all over the world?
Yes, that was it! And with all the hoopla, all the images, all the evidence that he really did exist—most notably, the cookie crumbs on the plate that my older sisters had left next to the fireplace the previous year—how was it possible that Santa wasn’t real? But most important—I wanted to keep on believing in Santa . . . so I did.
If you want to know the essential truth, I still believe in Santa . I mean, the world is such a better, more cheerful, more generous, more magical place with him than it would be without him. And that, my friends, is the truth about Santa Claus.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] See June 7, 2023 post – INHERITANCE (PART ONE: MOTHER / Chapter 3 – “Engineer”).
