Other Visions

Please…Don’t Kill Santa!
by Harrison Richards

Harrison Richards is a Palmist and Mystery Entertainer based in Leeds, UK. He can be contacted through his website at www.palm-reading.co.uk.

I have fond memories of my childhood Christmases. As the nights drew in, the weather got colder and Christmas lights began to appear in the windows of neighbourhood houses, the anticipation grew for the arrival of one particular festive visitor… Father Christmas.

The arrival of Santa was, for me, a truly magical event. The very idea of the great man arriving at my house to deliver the toys I’d been dreaming of all year was simultaneously thrilling, awe-inspiring and even a little frightening. It was this rush of excited feelings and emotions that made Christmas such a wonderfully enchanting time for me.

Of course, I’ve since learnt the terrible truth. My parents had been lying to me for years. There’s no such thing as Santa, there’s no Rudolph pulling a magical sleigh full of gifts for the children of the world. None of it was true!

So am I disgusted and angered by my parent’s actions? After all, they lied to me when I was young and vulnerable. They filled my adolescent mind with beliefs in mythical beings and magical journeys when I was at my most formative age, when I was looking up to my parents and relying on them to help me shape my view of reality. And while we’re asking questions, here’s another one: what the hell does this have to do with mentalism?

To answer the first question, no, I’m not angry with my parents for lying to me for so long. Far from it. I’m thankful that they gave me the opportunity to dream, to believe in magic and to have wonderful times filled with awe and wonder. My parents weren’t lying to me to be cruel, they were telling me these things to entertain my imagination and to fill my childhood world with added joy and astonishment. And they respected my intellect enough to know that in time I would shape my own understanding of reality and form my own beliefs based on my individual outlook on life.

This reminiscing back to a time in life when my mind was filled with the belief that maybe the impossible was possible, does of course lead me to discuss the art of mentalism and in particular, the importance of allowing our audiences to believe that what we are doing is real.

It’s all too common for magicians to criticise mentalists for not being ‘honest’ about their use of trickery. Sure, they say, you can pretend to have amazing powers, but at the end of the day you must inform your audience that it’s all just an illusion, otherwise you run the risk of changing belief systems and altering the way people view the world.

I find this outlook incredibly insulting to my audience, who I believe to be intelligent, thoughtful individuals, more than capable of drawing their own conclusions and making up their own minds. If it’s immoral to give our audiences the opportunity to question and wonder then it certainly must be wrong to lie to our children about Santa Claus and his reindeers. After all, the mind of a child is far more open to new ideas and possibilities than that of an adult. Should we inform our children on Christmas day that the whole Santa thing is pure make-believe?

Imagination and an open mind are not the sole property of artists, dreamers, New-Age believers and children; they’re an equally important part of critical and scientific thinking. Einstein and Newton, to name a couple of examples, needed both in order to make the mental leaps necessary to turn their ideas into realities.

Mentalists, as entertainers (and I think it’s important to distinguish mentalism as a form of entertainment), feed the adult desire to experience the incredible and the impossible, the same desire we had as children. To reduce everything to tricks and illusions is tantamount to telling a child that Father Christmas doesn’t exist. And why would anyone be so unnecessarily cruel when the very idea of Santa brings so much joy and pleasure, feeds the imagination and adds that extra element of wonder to our lives?

Harrison Richards