It was sad when my youngest daughter figured out the riddle of the tooth fairy. While some of fairy’s rides were a little bumpy (i.e. “There’s another tooth under her pillow? Ugh, I don’t have any cash.”), all were successfully completed. Teeth were rescued and nominal compensation exchanged. My daughter was overjoyed when she awoke. There was magic.
Different cultures delight in an assortment of enchantment-associated traditions. Many sorcery stories are positive, life-engaging. Some are darker, involving forces of evil pitted against personages of good. All inspire the imagination of the young in powerful ways.
As a child, I was captivated by the imaginative. Not that I personally possessed an abundance of the quality; I just found it reassuring that the world was influenced – perhaps even guided – by forces of creativity and imagination who cared about the good, who cheered for the hopeful, who rewarded the kind. It was nice to know that beings such as Santa Claus existed, less because they brought things, more because they stood for things. They lived above the fray. They were consistent and reliable. They embodied a world of goodness, not accomplishments.
It was fun to re-experience the non-religious fairy and spirit world as an adult parent. My wife and I created some fairy friends for our children. Those fairies communicated with the girls during times of triumph and struggle, encouraging them to become better versions of themselves. There was also Max, an excitable elf who would call my nephews every Christmas Eve and, amidst lots of high-pitched chattering and horse barn banging, remind them to be asleep when Santa visited later that night. Santa himself called my house to update my daughters on his annual voyage. There were sleigh marks in our driveway, half-eaten carrots in the house and garden for Easter bunnies and Christmas reindeer, longings in November for the Peanuts’ Great Pumpkin, and superpower assimilations on Halloween. The magic was decidedly from a Judeo-Christian or Celtic tradition but I would have been open to learning from and leaning on other heritages as well. The key wasn’t the historical lens. What mattered was the experience of wonder.
Such an experience was not always available through formalized religion. While there is potential for awe, even rapture, in the religious, there is also exposure to the weighty matters of sin, immorality, guilt, and eternal damnation. The Easter bunny, although a symbol of fertility from ancient spring rituals, brought sweets and treats into our household, not fire and brimstone. Only an eye for the hidden was required in order to share in the gifts of the Easter bunny’s season.
But, alas, the joy associated with magnanimous mystery fades once our children discern the actual origination of the visits and calls. Oh, that was just “Mom and Dad”. Or it was my brother Mark, or my Uncle Mike. There wasn’t really a Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, or secret world of fairies. There was just this world, the so-called adult one, the one of the routine, the one of unmasked truth. Welcome to the view behind the curtain, our children learn when they are old enough to guess at roles. Welcome to the way things are.
How we hardly understand how things are! We live in a world where you can think of someone and then that person calls you – and we think time flows only in one direction. We breathe the same air as trillions of other lifeforms – and we assume that our lives are separate from everything and everyone around us. We walk on a planet that rotates faster than the speed of sound – and we act as if standing up with dizziness is the easiest thing in creation.
We think faster than the speed of light. We love stronger than the measurable bonds of nature. We live beyond the capability of our physical form.
And yet we believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and other so-called mythical beings don’t really exist.
There is so much magic in the world, if only we might slow down enough to realize that magic manifests itself to us through each other. Movies, books, and stories capture our imagination because our imagination inhabits the power of possibility and informs the role that all of us together play in the revelation of that potentiality. This does not diminish the place of God, the Creator, Allah, and the supreme presence of the spiritual. It does not contradict the dynamic tension between light and dark, yin and yang, and good and evil. It does not trivialize the vital place that value, morality, and decency should have in our lives.
It instead enhances the joy of being. The magic should only just begin when the identity of Santa Claus and other cultural colleagues is disclosed. We are, of course, the embodiment of the mystical. We already live in a constant state of augmented reality. Special glasses or head sets are not required. All that is needed is an openness to listen, feel, and see.
The tooth fairy lives on – if only we believe. Let’s not stop leaving gifts under our children’s metaphorical pillows, even when their primary teeth stop falling out. Let’s keep calling across generations and enjoying the ability to laugh, love, and leap into the wonder of the universe.
It is time we embrace the magic that is life.