Italics by Battista Falconi
Dear children, Santa Claus exists.
I want to categorically deny the bishop of Noto, who had denied it. I wonder why.
Perhaps he is a skeptic, there are many around in this period: on vaccines, on the pandemic, on climate change …
But, to return to Santa Claus, I can assure you that it exists from direct experience. And I challenge anyone to prove otherwise, also because there is no longer anyone able to do it.
He came to my house on the evening of December 24th, regularly, for a few years, roughly from when I can remember him until I reach puberty.
At that point my mother told me that he didn’t exist to claim credit for the gifts I received and he, rightly offended, never showed up again.
Adults often commit this kind of nonsense, for those who want there is a beautiful story by Guareschi about it.
For those few years, however, Santa Claus made me happy. Not so much for what he brought, the gifts were pretty enough but nothing out of the ordinary, as for the way he wore them.
I heard a ringing around dinner time and, however much I rushed, I found the door already open and the presents under the tree. Never him, however. He was already gone.
After all, I understand the rush, making all deliveries in a few hours must not be easy, although at the time he was also helped by the Child Jesus (who today I believe can no longer work so as not to offend other religious sensitivities) and, above all in Rome , from Befana (who spent January 6 at my house to leave something in her socks, but with much less emphasis).
At least at the time there was also a mouse in business which had fallen milk teeth under the pillow to receive a coin.
There would be a lot to discuss about the happiness we feel as children, about the fact that for one reason or another it fades as we grow up, along with many other strengths and weaknesses of childhood.
For those interested in the subject, I recommend reading “The people of children” by Margherita Rimi, child neuropsychiatrist and poet, published by Marietti 1820.
Someone thinks that the trauma of the loss of myths related to childhood is the cause of unhappiness. which afflicts much of adulthood.
In this sense, pessimistic but very realistic, it would almost be better if Santa Claus did not exist and perhaps this was what the bishop of Noto meant: to avoid future sufferings for today’s children. A pitiful lie.
At this point I turn to the adults, the children can go back to writing the letter to Santa Claus (which I imagine today also receives whatsapp), to complete the tree and the nativity scene (provided that they do not receive companions of different religious faiths which they could hurt sensitivity), or to get vaccinated (since, just to dampen the magic of childhood, we have also admitted them to this privilege).
With the same pitiful motives we could then say, lying, that not even God exists. But God is there, unfortunately, undoubtedly. To believe this, you don’t even need faith, reason is enough.
Yet, as we well know, despite his inscrutable goodness he allows us to carry out the most abject wickedness, instead of settling a sonorous sganassone when we only begin to think about them (and he knows it, because he reads our mind, much better than psychologists and psychiatrists).
As we know, despite his infinite goodness, God allows terrible things to happen, including the deaths of innocent people, even children.
I discovered this when I was already an older child and no longer believed in Santa Claus, when a former playmate of mine died, so unpleasant that I touch the idea of ​​divine punishment.
Then they told me that in the hospital he had stopped talking and his family realized that he was aware that he was at the end. A terrible punishment, like the “green mile” of the film, far too severe for his childish spite. Because God allowed it or, worse, wanted
it. In short: God exists. The problem is that he is a bad God, like the one who lives in Brussels in an unmissable film by Jaco Van Dormael, which I recommend everyone to see. Or at least incomprehensible, stupid.
To accept his inactivity, that he no longer intervenes in the bad things of the world, we must perhaps reflect that when he did it he did not solve anything, indeed he let them kill his Son. On the other hand, if we carefully read the Old Testament or all the Gospels, rather than just the more feel-good parts, we would discover that God is an extremely temperamental, quarrelsome, touchy, jealous type.
The only plausible answer is therefore that he is waiting for us on the other side to reserve for us all the infinite, immeasurable love by which they say he is animated towards us.
Of course, to believe in it you need faith, and also a lot of hope. In the afterlife we ​​should expect a bright, eternal future of happiness similar to what at least sometimes we should have experienced as children. At that point, for example, we should find all the loved ones who are no longer there. And we will finally meet Santa Claus too.
