In Defense of The Santa Clause

Every night during the weeks leading up to Christmas I make myself a cup of tea, curl up with a blanket in a room full of books, and watch Christmas movies. Everything around me is quiet and dark. It's magical, and when my cat decides to grace me with her presence it's nothing short of miraculous.

Sometimes I think it's perfectly normal for an adult woman to indulge in the sheer volume of yuletide cinema that I do. I mean, it's Christmas. Who doesn't love twinkle lights and a hefty dusting of snow? Other times, though, I wonder if I ever progressed mentally past the age of five.

I was six when The Santa Clause came out, a paralyzingly shy little girl with wild hair who found solace in the pages of her picture books. I was a lucky kid. I had wonderful friends. I had a cool older brother who dressed up as a clown and made balloon animals at my birthday parties. I had parents who read me bedtime stories and made sure that I never closed my eyes at night without knowing that I was strong and beautiful. My days were consistent. I loved school. I grew up outwardly timid but inwardly confident that no one had a better life than I did.

It didn't take long for me to find in The Santa Clause what I hadn't even known I was looking for: something unbelievable in which to believe. That's not to say that I was wary of what couldn't be seen. On the contrary, I was a typical child and thus devoured my parents' fanciful tales of fairies who paid for lost teeth and a rabbit whose sole job was to hide candy for small children one day every year. But these stories were for everyone. Everyone who put a tooth under their pillow woke up a little richer. Everyone spent Easter skipping around the house shaking a pink plastic egg filled with jelly beans. I loved The Santa Clause because for me it was a specific, personal experience. Here was this astonishing place called the North Pole that supposedly no one but Santa and the elves ever saw, yet here it was, right in front of me. And here were the reindeer. And they really did fly. It was like my own little secret with Santa: They've never seen you, Santa, but I have.

The Santa Clause purists will scoff at my appreciation for the second movie, which many consider a blemish on the institution of Christmas. And if you haven't already rolled your eyes, this one's for you: I even love The Santa Clause 3, which I don't hesitate to admit is a horrible, horrible movie. One of the worst I've seen, in fact. But it's just so good. My tolerance of the Tim Allen Santa Clause franchise is simply astounding. Whereas the original was a private invitation to believe in what couldn't be proven, the sequels were validation that you weren't wrong to trust a story. However contrived, they were Christmas.

Movies, especially when you're young, have an extraordinary way of trapping a part of you inside them--not enough that you notice the absence, but enough that each time you watch them you recognize in the dialogue and the characters a piece of who you used to be. This is what I feel every Christmas when I watch The Santa Clause. It's the same North Pole, the same elves, the same reindeer. And there's six-year-old Olivia, her curls clipped back in red and green barrettes, mesmerized by a world no human but her had ever seen. That is why I watch: to remember for an hour and a half the girl who didn't know that all she wanted was something to believe.