My Imaginary Life

Driving to Playschool last week to pick up the Small Girl, I was enjoying the miserable, dark day and starting to feel excited about Christmas.

“It’s nearly Christmas, Pootle!” I called over my shoulder to the Very Small Boy, who was sitting in his car seat, playing with a toy truck.
“Aaaaah – DUH!” he shouted, and threw his truck onto the floor.

He may feel indifferent to the whole business of Christmas, but it’s a different story with his Big Sister. The Small Girl is old enough now to remember the excitement of last year, and has recently been entertaining us all with excited chatter about stockings and reindeer and presents and “Santie” coming down the chimney on Christmas Eve.

I’m thrilled for her that the festive season is nearly here, bringing with it such opportunities for unbridled imagination; since the time she could first string a sentence together, the Small Girl has been passionate about imaginary games. For her, at the age of three-and-a-half, there simply is no line between “ real” and “imaginary”, and in the same way that she believes, when we go swimming, that I’m really a shark trying to eat her, she really believes that a fat, bearded man in a red suit will be squeezing down our chimney next month to bring her presents. Santa Claus, the only pretending game that’s specifically initiated by grown-ups for children, is one of the greatest enjoyments of childhood. And yet it’s been causing me to feel distinctly uneasy recently.

Parents in Ireland (so I’m told) feel so strongly that their children actually believe in Santa Claus that they complain to teachers when their ten-year-old children are told by fellow students that Santie isn’t real. And apparently (in DH’s own words), other parents will be “knocking on our door” if it’s our child who spreads these terrible rumours. But I can’t help feeling very strongly that we could still enjoy the pretence and the fun of Santie without actually presenting it as truth: when so much of children’s real lives are intertwined with imaginative leaps of fancy, why can we not have Christmas pretending-games without patronising the smallest members of the family by lying to them?

After we arrived at Playschool and I’d bundled the Very Small Boy up snugly against the driving rain, we picked up the Small Girl, who cheerfully sang us a medley of festive songs as we made our way back to the car.

“Shark?” she said to me (reinstating a favourite game).
“Yes, Little Girl?” I replied in my best Shark Voice.
“Do ghosts live in trees?”

I laughed, marvelling at her imaginative dream-world, and replied “I’m not sure, I think ghosts can live anywhere really”.
“Can they live under the sea like you?” she asked, her eyes widening. “Or at the North Pole? Like Santie?”.
“I guess they probably could. And actually, that reminds me – I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Santie.”

I took her hand as she looked up expectantly at me “Hop into the car, Sausage, and I’ll let you in on a little grown-up secret…”.