Thank you notes

Claire Doll
MSMU Class of 2024

(12/2023) Hi Santa! I’ve been wondering if I have been a good girl. I want a lot of things for Christmas. First, I want Cecile the American Girl Doll. I also want a dress for my doll. Also, I want some good books. I would really like them to be mysteries, like Nancy Drew. Also, I want pretty clothes and jewelry. I hope I’m on your nice list! Write back!

I hope I never forget how writing these letters felt. Picking your best pen and adorning a blank page with the words, "Dear Santa." Flipping through magazines, or window-shopping at your favorite store, and listing everything you ever wanted. Oh, and the latest American Girl Doll. I just had to have her, whoever she was.

Christmas is a feeling. I can’t describe it well, because I only felt the true weight of its magic as a child. The red velvet dress, the cookies.

The letters to Santa, and thinking they’ll reach the North Pole.

I would write them religiously, every year. To me, the letters to Santa held power. I could slip it into the mailbox, and magically, it would make Christmases perfect. Like a transaction, almost.

(Hopefully, you’re by yourself reading this, and there’s no kids around. If there are, read this next part to yourself—don’t show them the page).

My first heartbreak was learning the truth about Santa. I still remember that Christmas Eve. We spent it at my Mommom and Poppop’s house with all my mom’s family. In the kitchen, there would be plenty food set out: cheese and crackers, pepperoni, vegetables and ranch, all kinds of cookies, and the beloved eggnog that still sends me back to these kinds of nights. In the living room, wrapping paper. Twinking lights from the tree. Music swirling in the background. Crisp, frozen air seeping in from the windows, unmatched to the warmth of inside, of the crackling fire. My aunt Colleen’s laughter, a sound I only heard every so often, and my cousin Colton’s high-pitched, precious voice.

But because I had found out about Santa just days before, I spent that Christmas Eve crying. I had younger cousins, so I watched them open gifts from Mommom and Poppop and go on about their letters to Santa. My older sister Margaret had already known years before, and it was just plain fact to the rest of my family. I was so heartbroken, so hurt and withered, that I ran upstairs to the bathroom. Locking the door, I cried, hot tears streaming down my face. Me, in my red velvet dress, hair curled, ten-year-old makeup (yes, I was ten when I found out). Me, shattered at what felt like the worst feeling there was.

Some view it as another layer of innocence being peeled off. Some think of Santa as pointless (why would you want your child to feel this way after it all, anyways?). I simply felt angry, almost as if I were grieving. But, grieving what? Santa Claus, someone who I had never met? Or the idea behind it all?

I’ll tell you how the following Christmas morning went. I still woke up, flutters in my stomach. Golden light still seeping through the windows. Mom’s makeup-less face, Dad’s trash bag. The gifts were still there. Cecelia, and all her dresses (because I had an obsession over American Girl Dolls), and Nancy Drew books, and so much more. It was all the same, with the giant glaring difference, but it was all there. And for all the years after that, it was still there. The magical Christmas Eves, that morning feeling.

There’s only two people I can thank for this, really. My parents. My mom and dad have spent years making Christmas the most perfect holiday.

My father is a paramedic for Baltimore City and could have spent so many Christmases at work, but in my twenty-one years of life, he has never missed a single December 25th with me (and he won’t be missing my twenty-second Christmas, either). He works tirelessly and effortlessly to afford such amazing gifts and time with us. He is the hardest worker I know, and I never appreciated this as a child. I wrote to Santa; I thanked Santa.

And my mother. She works tirelessly, too—making Christmas cookies, decorating our entire house, moving the coffee table in the living room so we have more space for presents. For twelve years she has still been playing Santa; she crafts each Christmas so it is perfect, like I am seven again, even though I am well over that age, even though that’s not how life is anymore. But it’s beautiful, the way she created a childhood that I am eternally thankful for. The way she replicates it every year. She is the reason I have my American Girl Dolls. She is the reason I think of magic when I drink eggnog or smell the Christmas tree. But as a child, I wrote to Santa, and thanked Santa, too.

I don’t think the idea of Santa is bad. In fact, I think it is important that children have this very first heartbreak, so they feel an even greater love and thankfulness for their parents. To make Christmas magical is difficult. There are so many challenges and hardships in the world, that creating magic seems pointless.

I know that when I’m old, I would give anything to be where I am, right now. To still have Christmases with my parents and sister, to still spend it with my family. To write thank-you notes to Mom and Dad, rather than Santa—because even though I’ll never get back those years where I believed in a flying sleigh and reindeer and presents through the chimney, I’ll also never get back the years of consciousness and gratefulness and having everyone right here, right now. That is the beauty of Christmas.

So thank you, Mom and Dad, for all the Christmases of the past and present. I hope to make the ones of the future just as special. Thank you for moving the living room coffee table, for baking extra cookies, for Cecile the American Girl Doll.

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