How I almost ruined Christmas magic for a 5 year old

Last month, a few days prior to Christmas, we were having a usual evening at home with the kids. There had been a few Christmas related activites over the November-December period - a few bump-into Santa Clauses in shopping malls, a school performance with cacophonous children singing Christmas carols and a few complicated conversations explaining Jesus worshipers vs. Ganesha worshipers.

That evening just before bedtime, our son Vedant asked a straightforward question - "Appa - is Santa Claus real ?", he said.

If 12 years of witnessing stellar leadership and marketing in various organizations had taught me anything, it was the importance of millenials to the growth strategy. Which is irrelevant in this situation. The other lesson I'd learnt from leaders is that you should never address an issue directly if the topic can be be muddled and left unaddressed. And so the conversation continued.

"What do you mean 'Is Santa Claus real' ?", I asked.

"I mean does he exist ?"

"Well what do you think ?"

"I don't think he is real. Is he ?"

Here I thought if Vedant is already on the path of enlightenment and objectivity, why should I steer him in another direction ?

"You are right. He is not real." I said.

Vedant's shoulders visibly drooped. "Oh I wish he was real and I could meet him on Christmas Day."

Later on after the kids had slept off, my wife said - "There is so much beauty in the idea of Santa Claus. He's just 5. You shouldn't have burst the concept so early in life".

"Well maybe the whole Santa thing is just an excuse for getting gifts", I said, brushing it off. But the guilt lingered on. Keeping aside the commercial obligation of gifting and the constant GDPR data privacy violation style of vigilance, there are so many little aspects to the Santa fable that defies the everyday life - the irrational flight of reindeers up in the sky, the impossible task of delivering gifts to all children on one night, the improbable appearance of Santa Claus in familiar places running up to the actual Christmas day. And I had successfully ruined another 5 years of such harmless imagination by asking Vedant to view life just as a collection of what is feasible.

The next morning, evidently Vedant had been mulling about the same topic as well.

"Appa, yesterday when you mentioned Santa Claus is not real - you were tricking me right ?"

Jebus has saved me! I thought in my head.

"OF COURSE I was tricking you."

"So Santa did read my letter and that's how I got my scooter ?", he asked with glittering eyes.

"OF COURSE!", I said. "That's how he knew what to get you for Christmas. And so we all went and bought it together at Decathalon."

He pulled out the letter from the drawer and stared at it, beaming - "See, wasn't it a good idea to write this to Santa ?", he said.

The letter was still in our house, the trip to Decathalon was like any other shopping visit, the scooter purchase happened 2 weeks prior to Christmas, the delivery was not done by reindeers. Yet none of this mattered to the 5 year old. He rode the scooter, imagining that a rotund man in a red costume had sanctioned the purchase.

A Christmas miracle I say!