On Fairy-Stories, Part Four

As most of you know, I just finished my weekend job in which I transform into a Scandinavian elf and roam St. Charles’s Main Street spreading good cheer and handing out collector cards. I’m accompanied by another elf, an angel, a fairy, the Nutcracker Prince and Clara, and a host of gift-givers from around the world, such as Father Christmas, Pere Noël, Julinese, and La Befana. Each one of us lives in the magical reality, and it’s a job I take very seriously. This frustrates a lot of people. Here is a typical conversation with an adult when there aren’t any children around:

Mikkel and Mikko, Christmas elves, children of the Scandinavian fay.
Depicted cuddling a cute doggie.

ADULT: So are you guys students from Lindenwood, or what?

MIKKO: No, I finished elf school a few centuries ago.

ADULT: Haha, of course. But seriously, where are you from?

MIKKO: Scandinavia. I grew up on the Swedish-Finnish border.

ADULT: In real life?

MIKKO: Of course in real life! I live up at the North Pole now, though.

ADULT (trying to figure out if she’s talking about Alaska): Where’s that?

MIKKO: On top of the world. 

ADULT (gives her a blank look)

MIKKO: I work for Santa. I’m in charge of making sure all the toys get made.

Getting ready for a parade.

ADULT (starting to get fed up): Do you know how old I am?

MIKKO: I’m terrible at guessing humans’ ages. I’m 647.

ADULT (gives up and walks away)

MIKKO: Gleðileg Jól!

It doesn’t take long to learn that adults expect fantasy to be a sly and utterly fake performance solely for the benefit of children. On the contrary, sincere fantasy is crucial to both children and adults.

Last year, I saw a Santa (not involved in Christmas Traditions, I might add) who was lining up kids to sit on his lap. After just a few minutes, I realized that Santa spoke loudly and jovially to the children, interjecting “Ho! Ho! Ho!” in a booming voice wherever possible. But when he talked to the adults over their children’s heads, he dropped the act and spoke in his normal voice. I felt insulted on the children’s behalf. Santa wasn’t taking this seriously. To him, this was just another day on the job, fooling children with a fake beard.

This is something that has always bothered me about the story of Santa Claus. Parents teach their children this fairy-story as if it’s a lie that they’ll have to learn about someday. I much prefer the way my parents taught me. As little kids, my brother and I had an argument about whether or not the Santa we’d seen downtown was the real Santa Claus. I said he was, and my brother said he wasn’t. Furious, I ran up to Mom and demanded an answer.

“No, that person downtown wasn’t the real Santa Claus,” Mom said calmly. “He was a man dressed up like Santa Claus.”

Some people have heard me tell this story and gasp in horror that my mother would shatter my fantasy like that. However, this revelation did nothing of the kind. I felt mildly miffed that my brother was right and I was wrong, but the incident strengthened my belief in Father Christmas. He was too magical and majestic to be crammed into a red suit and squeezed down a chimney. From then on, I imagined him as he appeared in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe— real but otherworldly.

The honest belief in the magical was something my parents infused in me from the beginning: something to be cherished all throughout life, not just as a child. In short, they took me seriously, as every child should be.

This is all a roundabout way of bringing up this quote from Tolkien’s On Fairy-Stories:

It is true that the age of childhood-sentiment has produced some delightful books (especially charming, however, to adults) of the fairy kind or near to it; but it has also produced a dreadful undergrowth of stories written or adapted to what was or is conceived to be the measure of children's minds and needs. The old stories are mollified or bowdlerized, instead of being reserved; the imitations are often merely silly, Pigwig-genry without even the intrigue; or patronizing; or (deadliest of all) covertly sniggering, with an eye on the other grown-ups present. I will not accuse Andrew Lang [an author who compiled fairy-tales] of sniggering, but certainly he smiled to himself, and certainly too often he had an eye on the faces of other clever people over the heads of his child-audience —to the very grave detriment of [his works].

Magic is a real part of life, and it should be taken seriously. To this day I firmly believe in Santa Claus— part of Faërie, as mysterious and elusive as the rest. Merry Christmas, everyone!

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