I ruined Christmas for my twin brother when we were nine. It was a Sunday afternoon in early December and my precocious cousin was visiting. She passed on the seasonal wisdom in the same breezy tone she demystified slow dancing and periods. I rushed downstairs to where the adults were assembled (already stuck into the gin and tonics, probably, this being the ’90s) and demanded the truth. As my mother answered me, I caught sight of my twin, perched on a padded stool in the corner. With that one word, he punched the velvet upholstery with his fist and his face crumpled in the same moment, like somebody had also struck him. “I hope you’re happy – you’ve ruined Christmas for your brother,” some grown-up said, or maybe I just said it in my head.
As a mother and aunt, I’ve come to think that there are two types of believers in this world. There are the yuletide killjoys who doubt, test and set traps. And there are those who turn a blind eye and choose to believe because they know it’s good for them. (Didn’t the pragmatists argue, more or less, that what works well counts as true?) I was a yuletide killjoy. I’m fairly sure my offspring falls into the latter camp, a doe-eyed sweetie who still writes to the fairy under the stairs asking for a big bar of chocolate to share with his mother.
Forget the marshmallow test. I’m guessing a child’s attitude to this subject tells us a lot more, maybe not about their capacity for success in the boardroom, but their pragmatism, their knack for happiness and social cohesion.
Choosing to allow the magic of Christmas into your life isn’t about being fooled, then; it’s about learning when to co-operate with a shared belief. That might be one of the most important social skills we ever acquire. Long before we as children encounter ideas like money, nationhood or adulthood itself, we’re initiated into the idea that some things exist because we all agree to act as though they do. If social life is a performance, as Erving Goffman argued, much of it runs on an unspoken assent not to disrupt the scene. Like good improvisers, some children may simply be choosing not to break character. This is a kind of magic. It’s a reality we make together.
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I love that my almost-nine year old – a precocious only child and a cancer survivor who sometimes seems so very old – woke me up shouting the other morning because his elves (yes there are two in our house – I guess we are just very, very lucky) had reappeared. It’s something I want to hold on to for a little longer.
Psychologists have long argued that some beliefs matter less for their truth value than for the space they open up, a shared zone between fantasy and reality where trust, play and security are learned. And maybe there’s a lot to be said for these rituals of belief, whether it’s midnight Mass or Christmas morning.
I’m not advocating wilful disillusionment. But in a post-truth world that chips away at any shared sense of factual reality, Christmas still belongs to a different category altogether: a story we agree to believe, without ever asking it to account for itself as fact, and one that quietly teaches children how some beliefs change, fade and eventually make room for other kinds of knowing.
Of course, not all collusion is benign. The killjoy, as Sara Ahmed tells us, is a name levelled at those who refuse to go along with the collective consensus, who resist the pressure to keep the peace, especially at this time of year. And there’s plenty of it: along with the pressure to have a holly jolly Christmas and not wreck the vibe, we’re encouraged to avoid difficult topics, to conform, to play nice, to grin and bear it. The yuletide killjoy, these days, might be found calling out a homophobic uncle over Christmas dinner or refusing to laugh along with a racist joke when many magazine articles and Instagram posts on festive etiquette advise us to stay quiet, offer tips on how to deflect rude or intrusive comments, or diplomatically swerve difficult conversations. But does our killjoy wreck the mood by pointing out an untruth or injustice, Ahmed asks, or does she simply show up the bad feelings that are already there, but hidden, displaced or negated under public signs of joy?
[ Christmas can be a dissonant experience, like feeling miserable at DisneylandOpens in new window ]
Sometimes, it’s good to know when to go along with a collective story or mood. Sometimes it’s important to point to the truths that people would rather not acknowledge or see. The trick, I think, is learning how to tell the difference. If we’re lucky, childhood offers the space to rehearse this judgment in a low stakes way. We learn not only how to believe, but how to stop believing, how to respect the beliefs of others and eventually how to let go of a story without feeling betrayed by it. That’s the real magic of Christmas. It is one of the gentler lessons childhood offers, and one we rarely manage to replicate so kindly in later life.
