Santa Claus

At the time my sister was 5 and I was 7. She'd always been the sort of skeptical type. Whenever my dad read us stories, she'd always stop him. "Nuh-uh. That couldn't happen. aren't real/can't happen."

When I was little, I believed in fairies. I wrote them letters, sealed them in envelopes that I drew all over, and hid them in the flowers outside in the evening. My mother wrote back to me, pretending she was the fairies. The envelopes were all decorated with glitter. I raced out in the mornings to find the little fairy letters. She told me the truth when I found one of my letters and asked her how she found it.

So hopefully now you know that I would still probably be writing to fairies had my mother not told me what was really going on. Oh well. If it were my sister, she would have none of that.
Back to the story. It is a month or so before Christmas. My mom and sister are eating breakfast. They are talking in low tones about something, and I hear them a bit more clearly as I come down the stairs.

Then my five-year-old sister says, "Mom, Santa Claus isn't real, is he." She doesn't ask, she just says it.

"Well," says my mother as she sees me, "I'm not quite so sure Cypress wants to know..." By then of course I already know the answer and she does too, but I pour myself a glass of milk as I hear my mother telling my sister what really goes on.

"Well it seemed kind of dumb anyway." She said this snottily as she wiped her mouth. "A big fat guy couldn't even fit down our chimney and a sleigh wouldn't fit on the roof. Reindeer can't fly."

My sister was sure a wise-ass five-year-old.

And I probably would still be believing in Santa Claus if it wasn't for her.