Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Elizabeth

I’ve always believed that, when it comes to their children, parents show gifts for particular age brackets.  While I think my mom was great with teenagers, my dad was a pro when it came to young kids.  Full of magic and make-believe, my dad was always our family’s designated storyteller and an enthusiastic participant in playing house (or, in my case, restaurant).  He was a willing actor with amazing range, a man who could expertly step into any role that was given to him with grace, good cheer, and all the right voices.  And he was at the top of his game come the holiday season.

When I was very young, my dad worked for an Alaskan-based shipping company, and he traveled often for business between Seattle and Anchorage.  As a four year-old, Alaska seemed the ends of the earth, an arctic wonderland where it never stopped snowing.  I genuinely believed that, once my dad stepped off the plane, he was ferried by sleigh to his business meetings, which took place, of course, in an igloo.  Because my dad was a master of make-believe, he kept up this guise by sending a steady stream of correspondence back home to confirm my suspicions.  Over the years I received many versions of the same oversized postcard, a panoramic scene of Santa’s Workshop in North Pole, Alaska, as if suspended in time.  The large alpine lodge, which looked as if it had been placed in the middle of a dense forest, was painted with bright Christmas scenes and perpetually cloaked in snow.  I was confident that the cathedrals of fir trees in the back were hiding the reindeer.

It was easy to believe that this world existed, and my dad provided the photographic proof.  In fact, my dad even saw Santa Claus.  In a letter dated October 5, 1982 (I was four), penned on fading stationery from the Captain Cook Hotel, my dad writes, “Guess who I saw yesterday?  That’s right – Santa Claus!  He showed me his magic telescope that he watches all his children through; all the way from the North Pole.  Santa told me that he would send you a picture of his house and write you a short note, too!”  And in fact, he did.  On that trip, my dad registered for a service wherein Santa’s Workshop sent me a handwritten letter once a year around the holidays.  The paper and matching envelope were emblazoned with dreamy vintage scenes of Santa Claus, swathed in icy shades of blue, and it is difficult to describe the excitement I felt when peering into my mailbox and seeing that envelope with postmark from North Pole, Alaska.

The next year we moved to a new house, and I was concerned that Santa Claus wouldn’t know that I had moved.  To make matters worse, a huge Christmas Eve storm knocked out the power, forcing us to spend the night at my grandparents’ house two towns over.  How would Santa Claus handle two changes of address in one year?  Even the Postal Service couldn’t handle that.  I left the fireplace doors open to ensure easy access, and my dad suggested that I alert him to my last-minute relocation by leaving him a note on the mantle.  But I was still fretting by the time we arrived at my grandparents’ house, the snow already enveloping us in huge mounds.  “I know,” said my dad, “I’ll give him a call and explain everything.”  He said this as if he and Santa were old pals who went way back; given the amount of time my dad spent in Alaska, it was completely plausible that my dad possessed a phone number that put him through direct to Santa’s Workshop.  My dad cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, dialing an exceedingly long and complicated series of numbers.  An elf answered, of course, and my dad chitchatted with him for awhile – obviously, he didn’t want to appear rude – before being asked to be connected with the Man in the Big Red Suit.  “I’m on hold,” my dad mouthed to me, while he listened to what I can only imagine was the North Pole’s version of Christmas Muzak.  When Santa Claus finally got on the line, my dad proceeded to explain our complex circumstances in great detail, and by the time he hung up the phone, I was satisfied that Santa Claus knew exactly where I was that night.

It should come as no great surprise that I believed in Santa Claus longer than most children.  Between the unique circumstances of my dad’s frequent northbound travel, his commitment to maintaining this elaborate world he had created for me, and my own desire to want to believe in this magic, reality was impenetrable.  But when I was 12, my dad and I took a long-promised trip to Alaska together, just the two of us.  During those early days of his Alaska travel, when I often begged to accompany him and see Santa Claus for myself, he promised me that he’d take me when I turned 12.  At the time, 12 years old seemed impossible and remote, like the North Pole itself.  But true to his word, we traveled to Alaska that summer, and while I had long since stopped believing in Santa, I still very much believed in that workshop, a real place in the northern wilds where our everyday lives met wonder and mystery.

When my dad and I pulled up to the workshop in our rental car, I said, “This can’t be it.”  The North Pole was not the remote wilderness I had always imagined but a slightly shoddy town in the suburbs of Fairbanks.  It was summer, a surprisingly sultry time of year in Alaska, so there was no snow.  A monument of a candy cane-striped North Pole was swaddled in a cyclone fence.  And what the postcards never showed was that Santa’s Workshop was perched alongside a major freeway.  When we stepped inside the alpine lodge, the effect was that of an overgrown toy store, peddling the same things I could find inside any Toys R Us.  It dawned on me that, for all those years, my dad had done a much better job of creating a magical wonderland than really existed.  And I sort of wished I had never come, preferring to maintain the illusion that my dad had expertly crafted.  As much as I love truth and honesty, sometimes the worlds we create in our minds are better – and more important – than what will ever exist in real life.

Although my dad never planned it this way it was a fitting summer to visit, the time in my life when that delicate veil between childhood and adulthood was beginning to lift.  There were days when I wanted nothing more than to stay a little girl, and others where I tried to propel myself headlong into being a grown-up.  The magic was fading.  As adults, I think we long for this time of year because it represents our forgotten ability to suspend disbelief, a skill for which children are effortlessly adept and that most adults fail miserably at.  Through all of those years of letters and postcards and phone calls, I can see now that my dad was giving me the gift of wonder, allowing me to hold on, just a little bit longer, to the infinite possibilities that the world still held.  Until he couldn’t anymore.

How long did you believe in Santa Claus?  What made you stop believing?