Tuesday, October 25, 2011

SANTA LIVES!

SANTA LIVES!

Santa lives! And so do his Elves! It took me a while, more than 50 years to figure it out, but Santa and his Elves are for real! Honest!

As a child I believed in Santa 100% until that fateful day in the early 50’s when I was at the Allentown Fairgrounds and Santa arrived without his reindeer in a red helicopter. He was bound for Hess’s department store and they had a sleigh on top of a truck to carry THE MAN to the store.

To add to the “photo op” they stuck some kids next to Santa on his sleigh. I was one of those kids! I sat right next to Santa. And, horror of all horrors, his beard was false! There was a wire holding the damn thing on! He was a fake! Santa was not real!

I was now 100% certain that I had been lied to not only by my parents and teachers, but everybody in the world was in on this conspiracy. Make room, Mr. Scrooge; I’m on your “Bah! Humbug” team.

This attitude went on for years. I bought the presents, joined the conspiracy, but never for an instant forgave the world’s populace for foisting this lie on to us gullible kids. But as I grew older and saw the greediness and fear that seemed to rule this world, I had a second look at Santa.

Santa is not a thing, it is a human impulse given shape; the impulse to give rather than to receive. How do you give shape to an impulse, a feeling that doesn’t have a shape, just an inner directive that shouts: GIVE!! GIVE even when you may not have anything left to give.

The desire is real, even if its shape is unknown. So we make up a shape to make an invisible feeling visible. We enter the land of poetic imagery, what T.S. Eliot called “the objective correlatives”, words that conjure up pictures that universally evoke a feeling.

So, we came up with a fat old guy with a beard, a totally non-threatening clean Dude, who we’d let invade our homes while everybody’s asleep. A kind and generous grandfather figure dispensing gifts, gifts that are an expression of an inner feeling that we call love.

Love is a feeling and has no shape or size. How do you picture something that has no shape or size? You invent a shape and size that could symbolize that feeling. Voila, Santa is just a shape and size that symbolizes Love. So, every time we give or get a gift, Santa Lives! Love Lives!

So who are Santa’s Elves? We are! We are the helpers who manufacture and deliver the goods. Some of us are green, with envy, over the love we think others get and we don’t. There is an antidote for that feeling of being unloved.

GIVE and you receive the gift of love. Not from the receiver of the gift do you always get love, sometimes you get rejection. But you always get a gift from yourself that you gave to yourself. You have fed that inner need to GIVE! A feeling of inner satisfaction is the result. You can really pick yourself up by your own bootstraps.

GIVE AND YOU RECEIVE! GIVE AND YOU OWE NOTHING! GIVING OPENS ROOM FOR RECEIVING! GIVE BECOMES ANOTHER WORD FOR LOVE!

Soon you discover that you are surrounded by love and Santa Lives! 365 days a year Santa Lives! Peace and Joy are everywhere! And you are one happy Elve.

Simply, Simon

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