COLUMN: God vs. Flying Baby Cherubs

I’ve only ever met babies that can aim arrows that flawlessly with their feet firmly planted on the ground, anyway. Yes, Santa Clause manages to fly around the Christian world in one night, but he’s a full grown man, astute beyond his 813,098,784 years, more generous than a soup kitchen, and ethnically indefinable. Yet, everyone outside of elementary school knows the latter was created by a group of the same greeting card specialists who brainstormed Valentine’s Day for the purpose of selling more chalk-flavored candy hearts and flowers that send the wrong messages. The only problem is that no one has ever met this group of ingenious salesmen, but we’re sure that means nothing. God only knows, and that’s okay with us.

As soon as February 14th rolled around my freshman year, I was introduced to the evils that erupt in the halls of any high school on Valentine’s Day, known to the less fortunate as Single Awareness Day. To every sad, lonely soul between classes, Cupid appears to orbit the heads of everyone EXCEPT ME, cackling and burping up rose petals and pelting smiling lovers with bright pink teddy bears and giant candy boxes full of the “assorted chocolates” purchased by the unoriginal.

Every girl races to count their candy heart packages, heart-shaped gift bags, and love notes, praying to Cupid they can decorate their locker with more pink lovelies than their neighbor, who only received thirty-three gifts, as opposed to her thirty-seven.

The girl crying three lockers down received only a notice requesting the return of her late library book. At least it’s pink and matches the new color scheme, right?

Every winter (pre-personal enlightenment and Single Awareness Day Discovery), my parents would ask me if I was ready for Santa to visit. Outwardly, I would claim I knew the truth, that I knew Santa was a phony, but let’s put out some cookies just in case. Inwardly, I was trying to keep my feet on the ground as my head floated off to the North Pole where that scene from “The Santa Clause” waited patiently to drape it in silk pajamas.

I was not a saintly child, so either Santa picked favorites, or he was a liar who only warned of coal-filled stockings and never really brought it to sad little me, who couldn’t help but enthusiastically test this threat, only to be disappointed each Christmas morning by pretty toys.

I finally I found out why this tragedy kept occurring. One year, I realized that the shadow I saw every Christmas Eve night — the one I thought was a sleigh but really was our porch railing, the one that was actually there every single night had my little eyes taken the time to stop being ignorantly blind and notice that — did I realize that Santa truly wasn’t real. Truthfully, reindeer cannot fly at the speed of light, only as fast as the speed of sound and that’s not quite quick enough to bring presents to every Christian child in the world.

These were also the days when my mom dragged my brother and me to church every Sunday morning, except for those few when we overslept, something she accused me of doing on purpose. On those mornings we actually ended up in Church, while the front of my mind listened to the preacher speak about God and tell stories of his miracles, the back of mind had a war with the front, because there was always some doubt there, some obviously misled belief that really no one did live in the sky, that nothing happened for a reason, and that everything was just coincidence.

Eventually, the back of my mind replaced the front. But now, something else sits where the old doubt used to struggle. The question screaming in my ears today is, “Am I wrong, AGAIN?”

No, I’m not wrong. We all are. We repeatedly mistakenly embrace these fictional images that represent something real, instead of the meaning they originally stood for. We give presents on Valentine’s Day because the calendar tells us to and because our wives and girlfriends will be hurt if we don’t. For some reason, February 14th is the only legitimate day for romance anymore.

Our parents tell us about Santa Clause and his elves, because that’s what their parents did to them and that’s what the neighbors do to their kids and that’s what has always been done. Every Sunday, we go to church and sit in uncomfortable chairs listening to a holy man teach us about this King of Fate that sits on his throne in the sky, telling us we can come to Heaven if we are nice and obey the law and if we make sure to praise his name every day, and no one else’s. Televangelists.

We forget that Valentine’s Day is just a reminder to love openly and express it without fear, because it’s going to come again next year. It’s just like every failed relationship, which is only the end before the next beginning. We forget that Santa Clause, bringer of all things joy, toys and candy, embodies a spirit of generosity, telling us to give back and visit the Good Will, and be happy about it, to embrace each other, and appreciate what we already have, not what we’ll unwrap later.

We forget that God is not a tyrant, here to govern our lives, decide right and wrong for us, or demand our honor and admiration and that we not make a statue of him. God is the idea of right and good, beauty in all things imperfect, beginnings and do-over’s.

God is our love and our compassion, our curiosity and our innovation, our clean socks and our cotton fresh laundry detergent.

God is in the flowers and in the streets, living in the woods and between our cement castles.

God isn’t a man deciding how we should live our lives and why, or the man that carries us over the sand, only leaving one pair of footprints and an all-too-popular key chain. It’s our questions about life and our general lack of answers. It’s the reason we keep searching when we can’t find them.

Guest columnist Blair Ivey is a student at Apalachee High School.