Here at Counselling Connections this week we were sitting down to our weekly meeting when somebody raised a question that is on a lot of people’s minds at this time of year. The question is whether Santa exists. Well, we have some fairly clever people here who have been to college and know a little about important things like psychology and philosophy. These are people who are used to seeking answers to the big questions in life. So we set aside the other items on our agenda and talked for a while about Santa Claus and whether or not he really does exist.

A first piece of evidence is the presence of Santa in almost every shopping mall. But I guess we all know from an early age that these are really Santa’s helpers because the man himself can’t be in all these different places at the same time. There seems to be two main problems to be addressed when looking into this. Firstly, how does Santa exist? And secondly, how does he manage to get all those presents delivered all over the world in just one night? The answer seems to be linked to these questions because it is in trying to figure out where the presents come from that we get some clues as to where he might be.

It seems that belief plays an important part in this conundrum. The World, it seems, is divided into two kinds of people; those who believe in Santa and those who don’t. But we figure that if you put a grown up who doesn’t believe in Santa in charge of a child who does then on Christmas Eve night Santa would bring a gift to that child. So does that prove that Santa exists? Because there is something in grown ups, even those who may not believe any more, that wishes to keep the magic alive for little ones who do believe. It’s about giving. It is about giving a gift and about giving proof to the belief in this magical person who inspires so many to keep on giving.

Some grown ups have memories of magical Christmases when they were children. They remember waking early, excitedly rushing to the bottom of the stairs and heading for the tree to find out what presents Santa has left. People like this try to make sure that their own children and nieces and nephews have lovely memories of Christmas too. Some grown ups don’t have very good memories of childhood Christmases for various reasons. Sometimes this has to do with lack of money or maybe because of illness or alcohol. When mothers and fathers fall out of love and live in different houses this can be difficult for children too. Grown ups will generally try to make Christmas as happy as possible for children.

Whether or not you believe in Santa it seems that he can still exercise a strong influence. This manifests itself in trying to make Christmas a magical time for children, of all ages. How Santa exists still remains somewhat of a mystery. He seems to exist quite strongly in the imagination of quite a number of people; both children and grown ups alike. The evidence which is hard to ignore is all those gifts. Where do they come from? They seem to be proof that Santa really does exist at some level. That is the conclusion that we came to anyway. We are in no doubt that Santa really does exist. We believe in him.

Counselling Connections, Dundalk.