By Father Robert Kinast

A peril of the priesthood is that nephews often ask questions that they hesitate to put to their parents. So it was, shortly after I was ordained, that a nephew caught me off guard during a Christmas visit.

"Uncle Bob," he began, with a tone that sounded more serious than his eight years should have allowed, "is there a Santa Claus?"

My first impulse, being fresh out of seminary and full of new polished theology, was to tell him no and then guide him efficiently to see that everything Santa Claus represents is fulfilled and surpassed by the true meaning of Christmas.

But when I looked into his begging eyes, my strategy melted. He really did believe in Santa Claus and was looking to me to confirm his belief.

"What makes you ask?" I hedged. He recited the family tree of know-it-alls who had been telling him Santa Claus fairy tale. The weight of their testimony was bending the strength of his own conviction.

"What do you think?" I asked, applying my person-centered listening skills.

"There has to be a Santa Claus," he confessed, as if on the threshold of a great truth. "Otherwise who will know what I really want for Christmas?"

"Surely your folks know what you want."

"Only if I tell them," he answered.

"Well, what's wrong with that?" I asked naïvely.

"You shouldn't have to tell them everything," he answered.

At that moment I knew why he believed in Santa Claus. And I think it was then that I started to believe too.

There is within each of us some hidden part that we eagerly want someone else to know about, to share, to delight in. But we don't want to have to tell them. We want them to discover it, to figure it out on their own, to get to know us so well that they can surprise us with a gift that says exactly who we are.

A friend of mine had faced a series of painful setbacks but maintained a spirit of trust in God, nourished by daily Scripture readings from the prophets. On her birthday one year, another friend, who had worked in the Middle East, gave her a small, unadorned rock which came from what is believed to be the birthplace of Isaiah the prophet.

"I'm not sure why," said the giver, "but every time I see this rock, I think of you. And I want you to have it."

My friend had been discovered by another who knew her well.

Of course, God knows us this well, but God communicates with us most of the time through other people. And they have to be in touch with us often enough and sensitively enough so that when God prompts them, they know just what to do and how to do it.

As many priests do, I had gotten very close to one particular family in our parish. One evening while I was visiting them, the husband said that when he and his wife had been married 15 years ago they had been given a bottle of Scotch which they had never opened. He wanted to open it now.

When he did, he made a single toast, looking directly at me: "To our family."

What I had been feeling privately, he had put into words. I had been known by him that well.

I haven't talked with my nephew about Santa Claus for a long time. But I suspect that every year when we both settle into the meaning of Christmas, we are able to believe that there is Someone who knows us well enough to realize what we really want without having to be told. And then a lot more than fairy tales come true.