Dec 20, 2018 02:55 PM
Quote:By allowing our children to participate in the Santa myth and find their own way out of it through skeptical inquiry, we give them a priceless opportunity to see a mass cultural illusion first from the inside, then from the outside. A very casual line of post-Santa questioning can lead kids to recognize how completely we all can snow ourselves if the enticements are attractive enough. Such a lesson, viewed from the top of the hill after exiting a belief system under their own power, can gird kids against the best efforts of the evangelists — and far better than secondhand knowledge could ever hope to do.—Dale McGowan from “Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion”
It’s a good first step. This Christmas is going to be really awkward.
When you realize that your parents are human...
Two years after my father passed away, a woman contacted me and said that she was my sister. Her mother was one of my father’s ex-girlfriends. So, for the last twenty years, we’ve thought that we were related. She called me about month ago. She did a DNA test and found her real biological father. She’s not my sister.
I was combing through the Black Friday ads and noticed that the kits were on sale for half the price. I ordered two of them. I was joking with my mother. I told her that I ordered them and asked if she had anything she wanted to tell me. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Ha-ha…not! She did. She said that her and my father weren’t married when she got pregnant with me. She was married to a man that drank a lot. They split up and he moved to Oklahoma. She started sleeping with my so-called my father, but her first husband came back to town for a visit, and they had sex around the same time. WTF?
My brother is a year younger than me. I asked about him. She said that her and my father were just dating, and one night at a party, my father went off with one of her friends. She was pissed and so she slept with another guy. Small farming community. Video games weren't invented yet. Not much to do, I suppose.
I was blown away. I have a cousin on my father’s side that looks like my twin. We’re really close. I called her and when she answered she said, "Hey, Cuz!" I started crying when she said that and then told her the whole story. Her parents recently passed away but she said that all of them have taken the tests. She sent off her parents DNA a month before her mother died. So, I should be able to find out if he is my father.
My brother has really high standards. When it comes to morals, he’s like Syne on steroids. My mother asked me not to tell him. I didn’t make any promises. I called him and told him about what she said about me. He gave me this big lecture about how it’s always better to deal with the truth. "The truth will set you free," he said. I asked, if it was him, would he want to know? "Absolutely," he said. So, I told him. He freaked out. His tune completely changed when he found out that he was in the same boat. He was pissed, really pissed. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t even want to talk about it.
I did some research and the other guy is dead. He’s buried in a little town called Bunch, Oklahoma. I should be getting the results any day now. My father never knew that she slept with anyone else. He was my rock. My mother, not so much. She said that the only reason that he married her was because he loved me, and because of that, she’s always resented me. Yeah, this Christmas is going to be really awkward.
Quote:Dear Editor—I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, "If you see it in the sun, it is so." Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as love, generosity, and devotion, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus? It would as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith, no poetry, and no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
I hope he is. I hope that he’s my biological father. He was a great dad.
Merry Fucking Christmas!