I AM SANTA.

This is the secret, silent scream in the hearts of women everywhere around this time of year.

Because towards the end of December we start to quietly resent the fact some overweight white bloke in a red suit and questionable facial hair comes swooping in to take the credit for all our hard work, blood, sweat, tears – and rather more money than we’d planned on spending. Again.

Yes, I know some men do pull their weight at Christmas, and some even go beyond reminding their wives to buy for their mother circa Xmas Eve, stringing up the outside lights like it’s an act of heroism, fetching the Christmas tree from the loft under heavy duress, and carving the damn turkey after a lot of unnecessary and self-important knife sharpening. That’s GREAT. Yay for transcending festive gender stereotypes! But let’s not pretend that’s what’s happening in most Great British households.

The mental load of family life falls to women, and it falls in drifts over Christmas.

We are the ones making the nativity costumes, keeping up with the non-uniform and Christmas jumper days and one-pounds-to-the-teacher and carol services and bake sales and moving the Elf around, and buying all the presents, even for his side of the family, and remembering not to re-gift the terrible smellies Auntie Carol got you last year, and thinking through what the Smalls want and orchestrating the Santa letters through a series of heavy hints so they match up with what you’ve brought, and co-ordinating relatives’ gifts and writing the Christmas cards and then bullying the Small people into writing 60 more bloody Christmas cards for the classes because it’s part of Small social engineering, and waiting up to get the Tesco delivery slot and then STILL having to do to an over-crowded supermarket with two kids in tow anyway for last minute bits on Christmas Eve, and decorating the tree and figuring out how to fit everything into the fridge and then the OVEN, and then WRAPPING all the presents and making sure the Father Christmas paper is kept special and hidden, and stuffing the presents into suitcases in the top or bottom of wardrobes at the dead of night so they’re not found, and thinking about who should sit where and that Grandad MUST have sprouts although everyone else hates them, and Cousin Sue’s gone Vegan, and making sure the kids open the matching presents at the same time to avoid arguments, and leaving out the mince pies and carrot for Santa and Rudolph and then eating/pretending to eat them and laying out footprints in flour/bicarbonate of soda, and then hoovering them up the next day, and taking the sellotape off the paper for recycling and remembering the festive recycling collection days and A MILLION AND ONE OTHER TINY THINGS THAT MAKE CHRISTMAS CHRISTMASSY.

It isn’t bloody Santa.
It isn’t the magic of Christmas.
It’s the magic of Mums.

If you’re starting to struggle with annual resentment, particularly around the fact that even a fictional fat fella gets more glory than you do, just remember you ARE Santa. The real Santa. In the ways that really matter.

And that’s how I’m going to try and explain Santa to the Smalls, when they come to the end of their belief, hopefully not too soon. Santa isn’t just one person – he’s lots of people. He’s YOU. And the magic is very real, it’s just not the magic you thought it was…

Too often, you see, when we give it is as much about us as about the person we give to. It’s a transaction – for thanks, for affection, for appreciation, for our sense of ourselves and who we want to be. Even when we make traditions, make memories, there is something of ourselves in there. We want to be remembered.

But Santa, Santa is the ultimate act of selflessness. It is an act of selflessness that as a collective we have all agreed to participate in EVERY YEAR.

If there is gratitude to be had, it is deferred by around 10 years until they KNOW, a good 30 years until they think to appreciate it, and definitely some time post their own parenthood before they actually GET IT.

At a time when a lot of us need our faith in humanity restoring – this is it. This is something we do, as human beings, together, that is kind of… amazing. We just all got too distracted by the anthropomorphisation bit to remember how amazing it is.

Because Santa isn’t a bloke in a red suit.
Spoiler alert: HE DOESN’T EXIST.

He is a concept.
A communal flight of whimsy:
A living, breathing fairy tale.

He is the best of us.

The existence of Santa is the existence of the only sort of magic that’s really real. It is a manifestation in a wildly avaricious and commercialised Western world of pure, unselfish love. Of giving without expectation of recognition, reward, or gratitude – just for the sheer beauty of it.

And that means Santa, in essence, IS a Mum. Or at least the essence of all Mums…

Because that, in a nutshell, is what motherhood is all about.
That’s what we do.

So Santas out there, I see you. I see you when the whole bloody point is not to be seen. I see you BECAUSE the whole bloody point is not to be seen.

I am Santa.

So are you.

And so one day, if we pass it on right, if we communicate it as the true magic that lies underneath all the exasperated threats, awkward knee-based encounters, half eaten mince pies, messy flour footprints and the piles of presents, it will be our children too.

It will become their privilege to be part of one of the only kinds of magic humanity is still capable of.

And that – THAT’S a gift worth giving.

It’s also a gift worth never being thanked for.

Merry Christmas.

PS. Facebook doesn’t show my posts to people unless I get likes and comments. So if you like this, please raise your hand and say ‘I am Santa’ in comments. I’ll wave back. #santasolidarity