Believe in Santa Claus

When I was a little girl, around nine or so, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. "Father Christmas," I said.

As soon as I found out that there wasn't one, it seemed to me urgently important that there was.

It was as if the world had had a wonderful vision of something perfect and necessary and entirely good, and everyone had agreed on the merit of it, only nobody had got around to making it happen. Like so many ideas in the corporate world (though I hadn't learned that then). I figured I would take it on. Nobody had taught me yet, you see, that dreams are anything other than our roadmap.

I wasn't a naive child. I knew I couldn't visit every boy and girl's home in a single night, so I drew up a (very rudimentary) delegation plan where there would be country representatives, who would then have county reps...it would be a team effort, in which logistics would be a key enabler.

Likewise, I knew I couldn't afford for all the toys that children wanted to play with. So my idea was that parents would send money..the rich parents would send a lot of money, the poorer parents would send a little money, and some parents wouldn't be able to send any money at all. I grew up on free school meals on a council estate, so economic realities were something I was very well schooled in by the age of nine.

But when it came to what the children were given, it wouldn't depend on what their parents had given, we wouldn't match up donations to gifts, we'd just give children what they would love most. And not dozens of presents, but one or two. I hadn't read Keyes or Smith or Mills...it just seemed like a good idea to me: practical distribution of happiness through active planning. It still kills me this thing is so hard.

I wasn't looking for the glory of being Papa Noel...indeed, anonymity would be a requirement; I was just trying to make sure that life had some sense of magic, and it wasn't all just the mundane let down we all get used to calling life.

When I found out that the best thing in life wasn't actually 'real', I vowed to make it so.

I've not given up.

Magic is real

It used to be called mumbo jumbo, magic, mystical nonsense. You’d hear it in dim rooms smelling of patchouli or in yoga studios filled with people contorting themselves into impossible shapes. Words like “energy,” “mind-body,” “intuition.” Skeptics rolled their eyes. Scientists sniffed. And yet.

And yet now, science is catching up. Or maybe it’s catching on. Look at meditation. Sit still and breathe, they said. Watch your thoughts like clouds, they said. Sounds ridiculous. Except now, MRI scans show your brain changing shape when you do it. The prefrontal cortex, the bit that helps you focus and make decisions, grows stronger. The amygdala, the panic button of your brain, shrinks. It’s not just sitting still. It’s reprogramming the wiring.

Or fascia. Ever heard of fascia? It’s that connective tissue under your skin, wrapping around your muscles, your organs, everything. For years, it was ignored, like a bit player in the body’s drama. But it turns out fascia listens. To stress. To trauma. To movement. It’s like a network, humming with signals we didn’t know were there. Practices like yoga, acupuncture, even sound therapy work because they’re talking to it, tuning it.

And intuition. That thing people call a gut feeling. Turns out it’s not a feeling; it’s a system. The vagus nerve, snaking down from your brain to your gut, sending messages faster than you can think. It’s why your stomach knows before your head does. It’s why you get a bad feeling in your belly and later find out you were right. Your gut speaks. Science listens.

And don’t forget visualization. Picture this: an athlete closing her eyes before the race, imagining every step. Magic? No. Neuroscience. Your brain lights up the same way when you picture doing something as when you actually do it. Visualizing is practicing, just without moving.

So here we are, five years on, peeling back the curtain on what used to seem untouchable, unknowable. Magic is science in waiting. The mystical, it turns out, is just the world we don’t quite understand yet. But we will. Slowly. One discovery at a time.

When we stop believing in santa claus we are left with only the harshness in the world

As children, belief comes naturally. We believe in Santa Claus, in magic, in the possibility that reindeer can fly. Then we grow up, and the world tells us to stop. To trade wonder for logic, faith for proof, stories for spreadsheets. And yet, when we strip away belief, what remains? Hard edges, cold facts, and a life that fits neatly into boxes but feels unbearably small.

Faith, as strange and illogical as it may seem, is not a flaw. It’s a feature—wired into us by evolution. Anthropologists argue that humans survived not because of brute strength but because of the stories we told each other. Belief in things we couldn’t see—trust in a hunt’s success, hope in a better harvest, faith in a higher power—kept us going when logic might have told us to stop. Faith, in its many forms, isn’t a luxury; it’s a survival mechanism.

Take Thomas Edison, who failed thousands of times to invent the lightbulb. Logic would have told him to give up. Belief kept him trying. Or Malala Yousafzai, who defied the Taliban to fight for girls’ education. It wasn’t reason that sustained her; it was faith—in herself, in justice, in the power of change. And consider every artist, athlete, or innovator who has stood on the precipice of failure and chosen to leap anyway, powered by nothing but belief.

At this time of year, when the days are shortest and the nights seem endless, faith takes on a special kind of necessity. Winter has always been humanity’s most daunting test, a season that demanded hope beyond reason. The ancient celebration of Yule, the lighting of Hanukkah candles, the carols sung in the dark—all are acts of belief. Not just in gods or myths, but in the return of light, warmth, and life itself.

When we stop believing in Santa Claus, we are left with only the harshness of the world—the spreadsheets, the scarcity, the shadows that logic alone cannot illuminate. But belief, even in something as simple as a jolly man in red, allows us to transcend. It reminds us that the world is more than its parts, that we are more than survival machines.

So, let us believe. Not because it’s logical, but because it’s human. Whether in Santa Claus or in something else entirely, belief is the light we carry through the long dark, guiding us toward a brighter spring.

Spoiler: I have not yet become Santa Claus

The specific wish to be Father Christmas has been abandoned. The obvious way - to become a parent and thus Santa to at least some of the children in the world - ever excited me that much.

I try though through my work and life to bring good tidings, hope, surprise and magic moments.

I don't always succeed in this, but the intention holds fast: the old emotional motivation is there.

And what is Santa Claus for you?

Not the jolly man in the red suit, not the face on the Coke can or the plastic figure perched in shop windows. But the idea you used to believe in so fiercely it felt like breathing. That something wondrous and magical existed out there, inevitable as the snow on Christmas morning. A certainty that there was a kind of magic built into the world—a promise waiting to unfold, if only you stayed good and dreamed big enough.

Do you remember what that felt like?

For many of us, Santa Claus is the first thing we stop believing in. And maybe it’s not just him we leave behind but the part of ourselves that trusted so easily, the part that didn’t need logic or proof. The part that dared to hope for the impossible.

Instead, we grow up. We trade the wonder for the weight of responsibility, the infinite for the practical, the magic for the grind. The dreams we once whispered to ourselves before sleep become small, manageable things—things that fit neatly into job descriptions, performance reviews, quarterly goals. We become realists, pragmatists, workers. And we forget.

But here’s the thing: Santa Claus was never really about the gifts. He was about belief itself. A belief that something beautiful and extraordinary was waiting for you, just beyond the horizon. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what you’re missing now.

What if you let yourself believe again? Not in Santa, but in the dreams you left behind. The ones you tucked away because they seemed too big, too risky, too much. What if you stopped settling for the ordinary and reached for something magical?

Leaving behind the safe, corporate life isn’t easy. It’s scary to leave the predictable for the unknown. But when you do, you tap into something ancient and human—a faith that we are made for more than survival. You rediscover the joy of believing in yourself, in your wildest dreams, in a life that feels more like magic than routine.

So, what is Santa Claus for you? Perhaps he’s the part of you that still believes, quietly, stubbornly, in a world where the impossible happens. Where there is wonder waiting for you if only you’re brave enough to reach for it. Where the dreams you once believed in can still come true.

Perhaps Santa never left. Perhaps he’s been waiting all along.