Santa exists... right(?)

She is six. The question comes every couple of months. Often in the middle of us talking about something very concrete, like what she is going to wear to school tomorrow.

"Dad. Santa exists… right(?)"

"Right" is the key part of that sentence. The question mark is almost silent. She is not really inquiring, wants flat-out reassurance. It's a ritual. Call-and-response.

She already knows that the Santa who comes on Christmas Eve isn't fully Santa. She knows it, and yet she still senses something real in him. She just doesn't have the words for it yet.

"Yes" is a lie. "No" is a lie. The only answer I can give her is a double one. Even as I'm expected by my fellow grown-ups to choose one or the other.

"If you say Santa Claus to someone, anyone, what do they see in their mind? The clothes, the beard? Do they know what he does for a living? His working hours? Do they see what you see? Then he exists. Just perhaps not in the world we can see."

I don't say "in your imagination" because imagination is what people can bring forth in their mind that isn't real. And that is not what I mean. It isn't a dog with five legs on a mono-wheel, juggling. My job is not to consign Santa to the imagination. Santa isn't a plaything.

She takes it in. She never asks what it means.

I found my grandfather's Santa mask in a bedroom at my cousin's. Still, Christmas didn't die in that bedroom.

I have worn the suit now. Twice. The first time, she told me afterwards that Santa had the same beard as me underneath his. The second time, she knew it was me. Her cousin told her (what is it with cousins and attempted murder of Santa?). She asked about it afterwards, but never pressed for an exhaustive answer. She was content with a wink.

This exposure scene keeps happening, and it keeps failing to expose anything. There was never anything hidden behind the mask. Her question was never about the ones she meets. It's about Santa Claus. One face can hold two beards faces.

Because how can Christmas magic be real if Santa isn't? That is my question to her.

Science is real. That is not up for debate. But magic still exists. We can say things like "it was meant to be" while still fully believing in the Big Bang. Magic is not a rival explanation to science — it's how a physical event feels from the inside, and how you make someone else feel it.

Bohr's model of the atom helps us explain and calculate the atom, yet it's not reality at all, while magic doesn't explain anything to us but is real, because it is what we feel. It is our world.

That person you thought disliked you? It never really mattered if it was true, the bad feeling in the pit of your stomach was there. And that was just what was in one mind about a single person, yet it changed your world. Santa, shared by millions, has even better credentials.

And her mind has as good credentials as yours.

So do I dread the day she stops asking? I have always assumed I would. But when I look at what I'm actually dreading, it isn't the loss of innocence, or of childhood. It's the loss of magic. And magic is surely a grown-up's business as well.

The double answer is the correct one — not the kind answer or the convenient one. What is in your mind is your world — not a picture of the world. Not a subjective place outside of a more real objective world.

What lives there, lives in the most real place you have.

Christmas Eve in Sweden and the door to the home is closed. Inside, she and the other kids are on their toes. A knock on the door. The moment it opens they start moving like an anti-terrorist special ops team, slicing the pie. Keeping their angles to see what is out there, while exposing as little of themselves as possible. Nobody rushes forward. The excitement and the unknown hold her at the perfect distance.

We circle Santa in the same way. At the exact distance at which the question stays alive. Move too far in either direction and you get an answer that, while true, is also a lie.

The liturgy will end. She will stop asking. I hope it ends because her language finally catches up with the understanding of the world she had as a six-year-old. So she knows what she is actually asking.

So that she can answer the question herself. The full question. Not half.

Then I won't mind.