I Still Believe in Santa at 25

Okay, no... I'm not talking about Kris Kringle, the old white man who comes in through your chimney on Christmas Eve and eats your snacks. I believe that Santa is the personification of a different kind of holiday magic.

I have had the pleasure of working for a therapeutic foster care agency for the last year. For a little background, therapeutic foster care works with children who have a diagnosis and require a higher level of care and services than a typical foster child. Our agency is very involved with the foster homes, which is something you don't get with other types of foster care.

One of the ways we're involved every Christmastime is called the Act of Giving, where we work with a handful of local companies or businesses who recruit donors to buy our children Christmas presents. This, to me, is where Santa comes in.

Santa Claus, to me, is our licensing coordinator taking all 50 Christmas wishlists and delicately writing out each child's name, age, and one or two of the things they want on to small paper ornaments to hang on Christmas trees for the donors to pull off. Santa is the business owners proudly displaying the trees in their stores, banks, and spas and encouraging their customers to make a child's Christmas a littler brighter. Santa is the amazing donors, some of whom spent $200+ dollars on a single child this year, spending their Christmas shopping for children whose holidays otherwise might be a little gloomy. Santa is our agency staff, tirelessly sorting through the hundreds of donations to make sure each child has the Christmas morning of their dreams. Santa is the feeling I get in my hands when I'm wrapping a present with love and care, knowing how happy the child who opens it is going to be.

Santa is the children's biological parents, who have to spend the holidays away from their child, and who might not have a lot of money to spend, sending presents to our agency for their kids. Santa is their In-Home staff taking time away from their families to deliver giant bags full of presents to the homes they work in.

As you read this, you're probably thinking that we should be working to help these children understand that there is more to Christmas than material things. I agree that this is an important lesson, but I also think of all of the children spending the holidays away from their parents for the first time. They'll wake up in a new bed, and a new home, with new traditions to get used to. Some children don't even get to call their biological families on Christmas day. So, you can imagine, to a 5-year-old, the Paw Patrol truck he wrote on his wishlist might be the only thing that makes him smile this holiday.

I think about the little girl who moved to a new foster home a few days before Christmas, probably thinking that Santa won't know where to find her, and how the adults behind the scenes worked double-time at the end of the project to make sure her Christmas was just as amazing as her three foster brothers. To me, that is Santa.

For me, because I live it, when I think of Christmas magic and Santa, I think of the Act of Giving. For you, maybe it's that you worked hours of overtime to make sure your kids aren't missing out on anything. Maybe this is the first year you didn't have to struggle through the holidays.

To me, Santa is a feeling, and I will always believe in that feeling.