Father Christmas shock – he really does exist …

It’s as much part of Christmas as holly and carols – the annual newspaper story where parents are furious because some well-meaning vicar, either in a sermon or in a talk at school, has let slip that Father Christmas doesn’t exist, and gets to understand just how angry self-righteous and sentimental parents can get.

When we’re children, of course, we believe in Father Christmas completely nevertheless, persuaded by the incontrovertible evidence of the presents filling the stockings on Christmas morning, the half-eaten mince pie and Rudolph’s carrot left on the floor. But then, eventually, the truth begins to dawn – the slowly growing suspicion that it’s just your mum and dad, followed, if we’re wise, by a few years pretending to buy the package because of the benefits that it brings.

And then, one day, we’re mum and dad, putting out mince pies and stuffing presents into stockings, and the fact has to be faced: the vicars we get so angry with are actually telling the truth. Father Christmas does not exist.

And there, I always thought, it stopped. But there’s another stage in this peculiar relationship with the white-bearded old chap in the red coat. And that’s when we get a bit older, and realise that the cynical teenager and the well-meaning young parent were both wrong after all, and the little child was right. Because he does exist, he really does.

Not the white beard and the sleigh perhaps. But the really important thing about Father Christmas is as true now as it was in the days when we used to try and stay awake on Christmas Eve to see him.

There’s a comforting day-to-day cynicism that we all indulge in – politicians are all liars and journalists more so, the multinationals are out to cheat us, and nobody pays the tax that they ought to. And as for the bankers … It’s an easy scepticism that starts in your teens when you’re desperate to look and sound grown up, and for most of us, it hardens into a set of assumptions that seldom seem to let us down throughout the rest of our lives. But it’s just as well every now again to remember that, as a world view, it’s astonishingly selective.

Because there’s also real, disinterested kindness walking the world. For everyone who tries to do us down, there are a score of people who will do us a good turn. For every old lady who’s mugged, a hundred more are helped across the road. For every piece of self-serving hypocrisy, there are a thousand unnoticed acts of kindness. Millions of Father Christmases, if you like, wandering around all through the year and all over the world, without reindeer or red cloak, and just doing good stuff to each other.

You may, of course, think that is just sentimental crap – in which case, bollocks to you, and enjoy the mean little world you live in.

But have a happy Christmas too.