For the last few months at least I have been answering some more and more pointed questions about the workings of Father Christmas. Our five year old son kept putting out tighter and tighter net of inquiries around me. It is not my job to disturb the magic, so here are some answers I gave him that might be helpful to others.
Oh, and many children think I am Father Christmas actually. Maybe a bit less here in Portugal, because I think the traditions are different. But in Germany, where we lived before and also in London and to some extend in New York, children would look at me in both fear and admiration, at the end of every year. And more every year too. So while I might not have an official mandate for this, I think I might indeed have some answers.
Father Christmas, or Santa or whatever we might call them is real. But a global intertwined world has made the delivery much more of a logistical challenge and it’s a bit more complex than a man and his reindeer and a bunch of elves in a workshop can express.
At this point the manufacturing of toys happens in workshops all around the world. And there are so many involved that we can no longer grasp or properly describe it. It’s also not possible to “Father Christmas” to listen and look at every child individually. The system of surveillance is done through, let’s call them “agents”. These look like ordinary people (and not just people) and they are everywhere and go about their business doing whatever they might anyway. Around a certain time of the year though, they need to get on their mission and do whatever it takes to keep alive the “magic”. And it’s not necessarily a material thing. Being present and being able to listen and observe and respond somehow to the magic is part of the magic itself. Maybe it is the magic.
Do I know “Father Christmas”? I do in a way. I do know how the magic gets into the house and then also know what happens over the years. I know why some presents do not arrive for years. Why some do not arrive at all. And sometimes when a present does not arrive this in itself might be the biggest gift. Because not receiving something or receiving it at a completely different time can be much better than receiving it at the exactly expected time among many other things.
And it all takes work. And work is the anticipation, the thinking, the wishing, the talking about things, the spending time together to find out what it is that is needed and what is not. And all this time we change and we see the world in a different light and we grow into the people we can be. Hopefully.
And how does one become one of Father Christmases helpers or agents? It is a path of experience and also of time. One day many of us wake up and realise that they have been picked to participate in the program and then the way how we end up doing it depends really on so many factors. Because every culture handles this differently and every place on Earth and every family really also slightly differently. And while there has been a recent push to make it all about buying and consuming and the exchange of goods, it really isn’t and it can’t be. We are a universe looking at itself, and we should not be a universe devouring and destroying itself. Even if it seems like we might be sometimes.
Does one need to be good to be part of this? Do we need to be good? Yes, but the definition of what good is also varies from place to place and from family to family and even person to person.
The best thing happens when we receive what we need even when we do not expect it. And the best is when we are able to give what is needed when it is needed, not much too early or much too late.
It’s really a big dance and it is best when it happens in the right places with the right people and at the right time.
And that’s typically when the five year old asks me about the very first person on Earth and if they experienced the magic. And my answer is that while they definitely did and they definitely have, they might not have thought of themself as a person even. The love and the care for others is not unique to just us humans. The more one starts to think about it all the bigger the picture becomes.
Love and the connection to others in a way that matters appears to be so fundamentally a part of this universe we live in, so much the energy connecting it, that it might indeed be the thing itself. And I guess that’s where most humans who have ever spent some time thinking about it have arrived at the idea of the all encompassing and divine.
It is in everything and at every scale. It is what passes on from generation to generation and story to story. But it even appears when somewhere on a path one finds a rock that somehow feels familiar. The rock obviously having taken an incredibly long time to be shaped and to get there, picked up by a living creature who has taken millions of years to evolve as well. That living organism’s ability to create for itself a world in which there are “rocks” and the ideas of being able to pick one up have also in themselves evolved, or maybe trickled down and shaped themselves from a much larger much more indescribable consciousness.
As I am writing this, here by an open window in Lisbon, the city of light. I am seeing the colours of the sky change in most dramatic ways. And while for me this spectacular performance in just a tiny sliver of the light spectrum feels magical, there is a star involved and an entire planet with all of us on it, spinning into a new position at a speed I can not even comprehend. And the star itself, the life giving sun, who has been around for longer than this planet and the so important moon have been, is being pulled. Its orbit is much bigger and is also part of a system of many more stars. At this present moment they rising over a horizon somewhere in worlds completely different to ours, and are—at the same time—setting in those exactly same worlds. The vastness of what we are part of is beyond comprehension. Our tiny spec here, allowing us a fairly modest point of view, our spinning little observation platform with plenty of snacks and plenty of stimulation for all of our little bodies feels like an incredible privilege for all involved. But the whole thing feels like there is a lot, a LOT, before we even arrive here and there is plenty, PLENTY, after we are gone too.
We seem to be vessels of something we do not even understand, maybe are not meant to understand. And we are capable of looking at ourselves and those around us and the world around us and be in awe.
And so yes, the magic is real. And the gifts I have been receiving over the years have been of an evert changing and sometimes painful nature, but definitely something I am very grateful for.
Yesterday I walked with two of my sons over some unpaved paths in Monsanto Forest. And it was so nice to see how the boys are an incredible present to me and how I am a good old present to them. And how we are also presents to ourselves in some ways. How the forest, planted just as parts of the world were engaged in most horrific acts of destruction and still are, has grown into something that feels so natural and welcoming and protective. How the paths we walked on were established by creatures or people we will probably never meet. While walking among the trees we could not see cars and no houses and no other people. But we encountered, among every thing else some mushrooms we did not know and could not understand. But at that moment they felt like friends to us. Wise little friends who have known this place much longer than our lifespans. Old friends who will be here long after we are all gone.
It is time for me to leave this keyboard and to make some more tea and some food now. My five year old, named after the philosopher (whose philosophy was love), is playing with one of his gifts: a spinning top he so very wished for. And I have to think of Sufi Whirling (something that very philosopher has “invented” as a form of devotion) and how we all arrive at something even if it is not a place or anything that can be contained in a word.
ho, ho, ho…. laughs the universe…
oh, oh, oh…
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