Beer, Pretzels ... and Belief

by: Joan Hitz

Every Christmas Eve, when my brother and I set out milk and cookies for Santa, my father informed us that what Mr. Claus really wanted was beer and pretzels.

Though my father knew many things, I couldn’t imagine that anyone, especially Santa, would prefer boring brown pretzels to the pink cookies we home-baked and avalanched with sprinkles each year. 

So as a young lawyer of six, then seven, I successfully argued the case and Santa got cookies. Every Christmas morning, the North Pole Superhero’s existence was confirmed, not only by pyramids of gifts from his sack of a million toys, but also by a half-drunk glass of milk and a leftover cookie missing a single bite. 

But the year I turned eight, something (a dawning cosmic suspicion stirred by the rudiments of third grade math?) made me decide to switch to hops and sourdough. 

That Christmas Eve, we finally gave Santa a tray of brown crunchy pretzels, and ... 

“Milk,” my mother ruled. (Apparently she only believed half my father’s inside scoop on Santa’s snack preference, and the beer half wasn’t the one. Dad let the motion ride.)

On Christmas morning, the evidence spoke. On the tray: half a glass of milk, and, every last pretzel - devoured.

We’d done it - finally satisfied Santa. When he’d climbed back up the chimney to take to the skies for the remainder of his trip around earth (as I recall, this trip always began in North Babylon), his belly had been stuffed with sufficient salty sustenance to last the night. 

That our chimney, encased in cement against the furnace, was fireplace-less, offering no point of traditional entry/exit for Santa, was a fact I wouldn’t consider. Nor the part about one bag holding millions of toys.

These uncomfortable “facts” melted easily against my inborn conviction that facts are often irrelevant, anyway, to that which is truly true. 

So, by disregarding, I chose to keep believing in Santa. Even a pretzel-eating one.

(My favorite quote, by novelist Shirley Hazzard, states: “Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to intelligence - to imagination, to love - than to fact. To be accurate is not to be right.” These words, and other wise ones, are pinned under magnets on my refrigerator.)

The Easter following the beer(milk)-and-pretzels Christmas, however, despite my dreamiest disregard, the awful facts of math came hopping in. 

On bunny feet. 

After the frenzied egg hunt, I couldn’t help calculating: Two dozen eggs per house, times fifty houses per street, times hundreds of streets per town. Thousands of towns per state, per country, per ... earth? In one night?  

“Mom? How can the Easter Bunny be real?”

I already knew what she then confessed. And within seconds, a more awful fact fell, with guillotine certainty, into my third-grade brain: Santa.

Oh, no. Santa? 

“Oh, yes,” said Mom. “But ... keep pretending, for your brother’s sake. He’s only four, so let’s make it fun for him.”

Welllll ... okay. Carry on, for my brother. It was still Santa - just his, now, and mine to make happen for him. 

Since this alchemy, of believing, into knowing, into, keep believing, was a loftier math than finite third-grade logic, I saw the sense of it, and carried on.

Because “facts” can dangerously muddle belief, unless you simply refuse to let them. Facts state that DNA makes up a snail, a leopard, a human. But, what’s behind the DNA? Where is all that DNA from? 

Did ... belief make it appear? And isn’t that so of Santa?

Today, when kids ask about Mr. Claus, I spin truth for them with all the red and green yarn I can unravel from my cranium: 

Santa’s roof is chocolate. His front porch is an ice-rink. Reindeer sleep in striped pajamas and eat sparkly oatmeal. On Christmas Eve, elves sit on the moon with silver binoculars to watch Santa’s ride ...

And other exquisite facts.

Some days, Life pries its fingers under the refrigerator magnets and, by hurting me, tries to trick me into ripping down my quotes. 

I won’t, though. 

Because despite all the facts that are true and aren’t right and good in this world, there are all the facts that are. 

So I hold out, carry on, and choose to keep believing. In flying sleighs, chimney-less entrances, refrigerator wisdom, and the magic behind DNA. 

In hope, and higher math.

And of course, in Santa. Who is, after all, the continual recycling and reinventing of magic, for children, by adults who care enough to make it real.

And it’s funny: Every December, my father’s Christmas present, consisting mostly of shirts, always feels incomplete, somehow. Then at the last minute, I run out and purchase ... a bag of pretzels. 

Happy New Year, everyone! May you spend it believing ... unbelievable things ... into reality.

(first published on December 28, 2011, in South Bay's Neighbor News)