One of the most expensive parts of being a parent is not the money spent on diet potions to get your body back, or school fees so the expensively educated progeny can incessantly ask you questions. Its on the imaginary folk, writes Mom-in-Progress Kagiso Msimango.
The Tooth Fairy.
The Easter Bunny.
Father Christmas.
Do you know what they have in common? They are expensive.
Black people only invent imaginary creatures which aid in scaring kids into submission, not ones that separate you from your cash. Don’t tell me about Father Christmas. His l definition of a naughty kid is extremely lax. He’d make the perfect Gauteng High Court judge.
As my grandmother likes to point out, children are not stupid, just inexperienced. They know something fishy is going on with these things. “So this little winged woman gives me cash for my used teeth? She builds a castle with them? She’s so tiny, what does she need a toothy mansion for?”
The Easter Bunny is an even harder sell. “This bunny, it’s just one bunny right? He hops about laying eggs, chocolate eggs, in gardens for kids to find and eat, for no good reason? Right.”
The children, they are playing along. They reckon that if they score money, confectionery and toys from keeping up the pretense, then it must be done.
Thing 1 never bought into the Father Christmas thing. Between the ages of two and three, she referred to him as “that guy”. This is before she fully appreciated the benefits of pretending that he exists. I think we should give Disney the tender to run the whole Father Christmas thing. The sham is currently in shambles. It is almost impossible to maintain pretend belief in the guy.
I’ve been attempting to get Thing 1 to concede to one fatal inconsistency, so I can expose the entire thing as a fraud, and stop buying toys, but I think she is on to me. When I pointed out that malls are teeming with Santas, she explained them away. Apparently, a lot of these Santas are fake, yes, however that does not mean the real Santa does not exist. You know they are fake because they get here before Christmas, they smell of mothballs not reindeer stink, and they are seldom near a chimney.
This year I triumphantly informed her about the Post Office strike.
“You know what that means? Your list cannot be delivered to the North Pole.”
She gave this a think and decided that you can pray your list to Santa if the Post Office is on strike.
“Isn’t God the one who hears prayers?” I countered.
“It’s the same guy”; declared Thing 1.
The kid has a point, have you ever seen those two together?
* This article was originally published in December, 2014.
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