Why I send a note to St Nick every year

The row over the primary school in Lancashire where pupils were asked whether Santa is real took me back to Christmas 1948, when I was seven and my brother, Paul, a year younger. We both wanted bicycles for Christmas (me a blue bike and Paul a red one). So Mum told us to write our customary letters to Santa and, as was the approved method of delivery then, set them alight and allow them to be carried away up the chimney of our open fireplace. Paul dutifully did so — but I had decided that Santa didn’t exist and stubbornly refused to follow suit. Bright and early on Christmas morning we both rushed downstairs. To Paul’s delight a shiny, new red bike was propped against the wall beside the tree. But there was no bike for me. Disappointed and in tears, I ran up to our Mum and Dad’s room where, after calming me down, Mum told me that Santa had not left a bike for me because I didn’t believe in him, at which point I underwent a conversion similar to that experienced by Saul on the road to Damascus and insisted that I did believe in him after all. Really, really I did! Mum then told me that if I wrote a letter to Santa, telling him that I was sorry for having doubted him, asked for a bike and sent it up the chimney straight after breakfast, he might just have time, after dropping off gifts around the world, to get back to his workshop that night and pick up a bike for me. I duly composed and sent off a grovelling letter. Come Boxing Day morning, somewhat fearful of what I would (or wouldn’t find), I crept downstairs, opened the door to the lounge and let out a whoop of joy to see a shiny blue bike with my name on it. Needless to say, I never doubted the existence of Santa again — and

still don’t. Santa, Father Christmas, St Nicholas, call him what you will, is the very essence of Christmas and is what makes it such a magical time of year. Only the most callous and unfeeling of grinches would seek to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of little ones.