SANTA CLAUS - ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE

Santa Claus has gone back to the North Pole; his reindeers put to pasture in Alaska. But he lives on in the minds of children and some adults. Here is how that genial writer of the 1930s, G. K. Chesterton, reflected on Santa Claus:

"We believed that a certain benevolent person did give us those toys for nothing. And...I believe it still. I have merely extended the idea. Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void.

"Once I only thanked Santa Claus for a few dolls and crackers. Now I thank him for stars and street faces and wine and the great sea. Once I thought it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it went only halfway into the stocking.

"Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it, and then leaves a great deal outside. It is the large and preposterous present of myself, as to the origin of which I can offer no suggestion except that Santa Claus gave it to me in a fit of peculiarly fantastic goodwill."