It had been 
a good Christmas season. Good weather in Belfast (even 30cm of snow- though in my absence), success in baking my first Stollen, and a few lovely gifts. All through the season I had one recurring question to answer: does Santa exist? Fritz, my friend and assistant, is still quite young, so this was his first Christmas during which he was conscious of what was going on. He regularly put the question to me, and like an enlightened parent I explained that Santa did not exist. Fritz believed me.
Then last week a problem occurred, unexpected, out of the blue: Fritz met a reindeer. Not just any reindeer, but a Christmas reindeer: for all to see, for him to touch, there it was! Fritz did not say much, because he is a well-educated gracious lion, but it was clear that his world was in upheaval. If Santa did not exist, nor did his helpers, but if his helpers made appearances on colleagues’ desks, then Santa could not be far!
This put me into a quandary. What could I say? How would I adress the issue, for adressing it needed, and squarely so, unless I wanted to lose my friend’s trust. I pondered my options. There was the “pedagogical” approach: “Listen Fritz, you are too old for such silliness. This reindeer was not for real. Yes, my friend Steffi has it sitting on her desk, but that is because she is a young woman, easily influenced by media and peers”. Well, that did not work, after all Steffi is older than Fritz and a PhD student of social science.
Then there was the culture approach: “Fritz, you come from Africa, so you know of course about the deep-seated beliefs in their culture: the mountain taking vengeance on the tribe if they do not sacrifice a goat, ghosts who cause illness, and the man who lives on the moon”. Apart from feeling culturally quite patronizing by displaying such a sense of cultural superiority, it was hard to argue since ghosts and mountain spirits are invisible, while this reindeer was unmistakeably real.
What about mythology? I could have argued that in ancient times peoples held firm beliefs about the gods, about the origins of their own nations, why wars and disasters occurred: Zeus was angry, Mars was thundering, Poseidon was jealous. But now that scientific progress had come on the scene, we of course knew better. Fritz was unimpressed. The problem was that this encounter had not happened in a toy store or in a child’s bedroom, but on holy, academic ground, right in the department for Non Profit Management. If I was going to convince my friend, it had to be on academic terms.
So I pulled out my (somewhat dusty) knowledge of contructivism. “Fritz, I said, we do not really know things as they are, but as we perceive them. Reality, including your reindeer, is socially constructed, in order to develop plausibility structures which create a mental and social order. So call it a reindeer if you will, but this was not really a reindeer, let alone Santa’s, and inductively concluding that Santa cannot be far, is erroneous and methodologically unsound”. Secretly I was fearing that Fritz might break out into tears at any moment.
Well, I was wrong. He liked me dearly, he said, but what I had to say was stupid. Of course he did not have a PhD, so he could not compete in discussions about the deerness of reindeers or social constructions of animal identity. But he had met a deer “in the flesh” (or in the fur, to be precise), and if that deer was not real, then neither was he (ouch, that stung!). And just because scientific methods (whatever that meant) could not prove that this deer was Santa’s-even though it was wearing his hat -that did not mean it was not. Lots of things could not be proven, certainly not scientifically, and yet they existed: love, friendship, sweet memories- all these were more than blips on an EEG. So who said that a stuffed reindeer or lion had less reality to them than a stupid human being? We all remembered the Little Prince’s fox (did we?): just because we only met him in a book, drawn by St. Exupery, did not mean his words were not profound, or the fox not real. In fact, he Fritz, considered the fox his friend.
At that point it was I who was in danger of bursting into tears, because Fritz was mad! Maybe he was right; maybe there was more to reality than supposed science postulated. Maybe my method was faulty, and I was in danger of disparaging what was valuable, by calling it myths, fairy tales, unscientific? The more I thought, the more I had to agree that Fritz was right: art, beauty, dreams, God- none of them would hold up to scientific inquiry, yet they are more than just a figment of my imagination. And Fritz too, was real, and I knew that!
So next time you try to convince sommebody that Santa does not exist, look out. You might be into more trouble than you were bargaining for. Yes, it has been a good Christmas!
# posted by tino @ Tuesday, January 15, 2008
a good Christmas season. Good weather in 
