I cannot remember ever not believing in Santa Claus in some sense. It does not follow that I never stopped believing. I have a terrible memory. Much of my past is a blank, and my mind has revised much of what it does remember. For instance, I remembered getting good grades in college until I ordered and read a copy of my transcript. Anyway, as best I can remember I've never stopped believing in Santa Claus in some sense.
I no longer remember just when it happened -- early grade school? a little sooner? a little later? -- that I pondered Santa Claus philosophically. How did he go down millions of chimneys around the globe all at midnight, or even all in one night? That is a big problem to figure out without even considering how he got down a chimney with a small flu like ours or how he got into homes with no chimney.
I suppose that at some time someone told me that the Santa Claus story is not the literal truth, and I suppose that that already seemed obvious to me. I knew that after all of the gift wrapping in the days before Christmas there would be surprise, unwrapped gifts "from Santa" under the Christmas tree, and at some time I just knew that my daddy was the Santa who put them there. My older brother taught me many things, so I think it likely that he told me the secret that daddy was Santa Claus in our house, that their daddies were the Santa Clauses in other houses, and that ordinary hired or volunteer men pretended to be Santa Claus in the department stores. Soon I was helping my parents and older brother put gifts from Santa under the Christmas tree for my younger sister and brother.
My musings about Santa Claus coincided with my musings about Holy Communion and the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation as taught to me by nuns in summer catechism class. How can Jesus be completely there, body, soul, and divinity, under the accidental appearance of wafers of bread as each of many millions of wafers all over the world all at the same time? The answer seemed to be that a spirit can be in multiple places at once. Just what a spirit is or is made of remained a mystery, but bilocation and multilocation and getting from here to there in no time seemed to be natural abilities of a spirit. I wondered what it would be like to be free of my body.
I still wonder about the nature of spirits, whether my own soul or the second Person of the Trinity, or the spirit of St. Nicholas, or angels, or other spirits, but these days I think more about something else that can go down millions of chimneys all at midnight -- imagination. Dr. Who's TARDIS, which is bigger on the inside than on the outside and can travel in almost no time from point to point in all of time and space, symbolizes what? -- imagination. Inside my little skull is a mind with an imagination vaster than the universe, able to go instantly to anywhere that ever was, is, or will be, and to anywhere that never was or will be, and able to create or to enter wondrous stories, such as that the example of St. Nicholas inspired many for many generations, even to our day, to give to loved ones and especially to the poor with joy and good cheer, as Jesus taught.
Are spirits, in the sense of invisible living beings with natures different from matter-energy, involved in these matters? I imagine so.
To believe in, to have faith, means to pretend, to imagine.
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Do spirits have natures that are different from matter-energy? That makes me wonder. What other kinds of energy are there besides matter-energy?
Caitlin, good question. One time at Moscow Socrates Cafe a conversation started about "psychic energy" and a retired physics professor challenged that terminology as not scientific. If the same term is used for matter/energy in the manifest universe and for spirits, it can only be by analogy. Like, what does it mean to say an angel is alive? Like how does this common definition of biological life, "The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism," apply to an angel? Does an angel have a metabolism, grow, reproduce? Not that I've heard of. The term "energy" also cannot have the same meaning for matter and spirit and can only be used for both by analogy. The nature of spirits like angels, souls, elementals, God, etc., has been a mystery to me since I was a child, as is what happens when a spirit being is visible, as when an angel appears as a being of light. Is that ordinary light? Just waht is the process? Is the conservation of energy maintained? I wonder.
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