In a multi-paragraph essay of approximately, discuss how the writer of "Give children something they will value" the truth about Santa Claus" would likely respond to the sustaining of Chester's beliefs in "An Orange from Portugal."

Give children something they will value: the truth about Santa Claus

The Sydney Morning Herald, December 21, 2004

by Barbara Grace

Most parents have a cache of lies, half-truths and murky misunderstandings they feed children from birth. I created elaborate rituals supporting cultural delusions. I stencilled talcum-powder bunny prints on the carpet and left half-eaten carrot sticks as clues to where chocolate eggs lay hidden.

All good fun, except that my five-year-old, who was a little too practical for his age, questioned why the burglar alarm hadn't gone off if a bunny with a large straw basket filled with eggs had broken in.

Like millions of other parents, I also tried to convince him that waif-like fairies scuba dived in tumblers of water collecting calcium-enriched teeth, miraculously leaving cash as compensation. Again, his logic came to the fore: "How could they carry such big coins when they're so little?" Advanced molecular structure. He never bought the tooth fairy story, although now I could possibly claim the fairies took his teeth to store stem cells for use in later life.

But the lie my son, who is now 11, questions over all others is that of an oversized, ageing man in a red ensemble, who, riding a sleigh pulled by a reindeer with a sunburnt nose, cared enough about his behaviour throughout the year to give him a gift at Christmas. This lie makes him question not only the cultural icon but also my moral value: "Why do adults go to so much trouble to lie about something that's not real, Mum?" I don't know.

I could blame it on the St Nicholas tradition gone mad. But that's not quite right. I could blame preschool for making Santa faces covered with cotton wool. But that's not the reason.

I could say I'm parenting the way I was parented, keeping a family tradition alive. Yeah, right, flip flops, sand and barbeques had a lot to do with big men in red felt clothing.

But if I was honest with myself, it was pressure. Peer pressure, cultural pressure, social expectations. "What's Santa bringing you for Christmas?" friends and family would ask.

Honesty and truth are the two toughest values I've tried to teach my son. He's found it hard to be honest if he knows he'll be in trouble, he minimizes the truth to evade a lie, he's done what most people do to avoid swallowing truth serum - resort to a failed memory. But he's miffed. "Why did you lie about something that doesn't exist?" he asks.

His question pains me at a deeper level, not about the relevance of Santa, the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy. My worry is that I lied to him, I perpetuated a cultural myth knowing he would one day expose my duplicity. How could I do that, when making him confront the difficult issues of always telling the truth, being honest with himself and not avoiding consequences by omitting certain facts? Why is it OK to lie to children who trust you?

What I overlooked was integrity.

The question really should be: who loses if children grow up believing in the idea of receiving, not giving? That fulfilling their needs means more than sharing with others? That Christmas Day is a time for suspending reality, and that a child born in a manger to a virgin mother is so ridiculous that inventing a power sleigh, magical reindeer and a fat bloke squeezing down chimneys makes more sense?

Young children are busy understanding the day-to-day wonders of everything that happens between a marmalade sunrise and a blueberry-tipped nightfall. Yet consumption, commercialism and computerised play quickly replace any wonder of the natural world. So it's not surprising that as adults it's easier to devise a ridiculous Christmas icon and swallow a few beers, anaesthetising the reason we all take a few days off rather than reflect on why Christmas even exists.

I can already hear the voices mocking me - killjoy, grouch - and part of me wants to succumb to the whole ridiculous fanfare. So, looking back, would I do it differently? Would I debunk the myth, stuffing Santa's nose in his reindeer's trough with glee?

I don't know - society holds such power, influencing our every thought and deed; yet, children growing up now don't have the luxury of putting off reality and maturity. They face problems I never grew up with. Environmentally my son knows the world is changing, he is alert-but-not-alarmed about pedophiles, strangers and terrorists. His family structure is evolving and he has experienced an enormous amount of change that most adults won't in a lifetime.

So does a little lie about a fat bloke make any difference? I think it does. My son needs to know how to differentiate an adult's mis-truths and question values while he still has time to explore the different versions of honesty and truth he'll experience as an adult, when lies are minimised to be nothing more than misrepresentations.

I say, strip Santa of his power and revert to the truth - at the very least someone won't be making money from it.

An Orange From Portugal

by Hugh MacLennan

( Chester was a waif of a boy. I never knew his name and, wherever he is now, I'm certain he doesn't remember me. But for a time I can say without being sentimental that I loved him.

He was white-faced and thin, with lank hair on top of a head that broke back at right angles from a high, narrow forehead. There were always holes in his black stockings , his handed-down pants were so badly cut that one leg was inches longer than the other and there was a patch on the right seat of a different colour from the rest of the cloth. But he was proud of his clothes; prouder than anyone I've ever seen over a pair of pants. He explained that they were his father's and his father had worn them at sea.

For Chester, nobody was worth considering seriously unless he was a seaman. Instead of feeling envious of the people who lived upstairs in the hotel, he seemed to feel sorry for them because they never went to sea. He would look at the old ladies with the kind of eyes that Dickens discovered in children's faces in London: huge eyes as trusting as a bird-dog's, but old, as though they had forgotten how to cry long ago.

I wondered a lot about Chester - what kind of room they had in the basement, where they ate, what his mother was like. But I was never allowed in the basement. Once I walked behind the hotel to see if I could look through the windows, but they were only six or eight inches above the ground and they were covered with snow. I gathered that Chester likes it down there because it was warm, and once he was down nobody ever bothered him.

The days went past, heavy and grey and cold. Soon it was the day before Christmas again, and I was still supposed to believe in Santa Claus. I found myself confronted by a double crisis.

I would have to hang up my stocking as usual, but how could my parents, who were still in bed, manage to fill it? And how would they feel when the next morning came and my stocking was still empty? This worry was overshadowed only by my concern for Chester.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve he informed me that this year, for the first time in his life, Santa Claus was really going to remember him. "I never ett a real orange and you never did neether because you only get real oranges in Portugal. My old man says so. But Santy Claus is going to bring me one this year. That means the old man's still alive."

"Honest, Chester? How do you know?" Everyone in the hotel knew that his father, who was a quartermaster, was on a slow ship to England.

"Mrs. Urquhart says so."

Everyone in the hotel also knew Mrs. Urquhart. She was s tiny old lady with a harsh voice who lived in the room opposite ours on the ground floor with her unmarried sister. Mrs. Urquhart wore a white lace cap and carried a cane. Both old ladies were mourning - Mrs. Urquhart for two dead husbands, her sister for Queen Victoria. They were a trial to Chester because he had to carry hot tea upstairs for them every morning at seven.

"Mrs. Urquhart says if Santy Claus brings me real oranges it means he was talkin' to the old man and the old man told him I wanted one. And if Santy Claus was talkin' to the old man, it means the old man's alive, don't it?"

Much of this was beyond me until Chester explained further.

"Last time the old man was home I see'd some oranges in a store window, but he wouldn't get me one because if he buys stuff in stores he can't go on being a seaman. To be a seaman you got to wash out your insides with rum every day and rum costs lots of money. Anyhow, store oranges ain't real."

"How do you know they aren't?"

"My old man says so. He's been in Portugal and he picks real ones off trees. That's where they come from. Not from stores. Only my old man and the people who live in Portugal has ever ett real oranges."

Someone called and Chester disappeared into the basement. An hour or so later, after we had eaten the supper he brought to us on a tray, my father told me to bring the wallet from the pocket of his uniform, which was hanging in the cupboard. He gave me some small change and sent me to buy grapes for my mother at a corner fruit store. When I came back with the grapes I met Chester in the outer hall. His face was beaming and he was carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper.

"Your old man give me a two-dollar bill, " he said. "I got my old lady a Christmas present."

I asked him if it was medicine.

"She don't like medicine," he said. "When she's feelin' bad she wants rum."

(20) When I got back to our room I didn't tell my father what Chester had done with his two dollars. I hung up my stockings on the old-fashioned mantelpiece, the lights were put out and I was told to go to sleep.

(21) An old flickering arc light hung in the street almost directly in front of the hotel, and as I lay in the dark pretending to be asleep the ceiling seemed to be quivering, for the shutters fitted badly and the room could never be completely darkened. After a time I heard movement in the room, then saw a shadowy figure near the mantelpiece. I closed my eyes tightly, heard the swish of tissue paper, then the sounds of someone getting back into bed. A fog bell, blowing in the harbour and heralding bad weather, was audible.

(22) After what seemed to me a long time I heard heavy breathing from the bed. I got up, crossed the room carefully and felt the stocking in the dark. My fingers closed on a round object in its toe. Well, I thought one orange would be better than none.

(23) In those days hardly any children wore pyjamas, at least not in Nova Scotia. And so a minute later, when I was sneaking down the dimly lit hall of the hotel in a white nightgown, heading for the basement stairs with the orange in my hand, I was a fairly conspicuous object. Just as I was putting my hand to the knob of the basement door I heard a tapping sound and ducked under the main stairs that led to the second floor of the hotel. The tapping came near, stopped, and I knew that somebody was standing still, listening, only a few feet away.

(24) A crisp voice said, "You naughty boy, come out of there."

(25) I waited a moment and then moved into the hall. Mrs. Urquhart was standing before me in her black skirt and white cap, one hand on the handle of her cane.

(26) "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, at this hour of the night. Go back to your room at once!"

(27) As I went back up the hall I was afraid the noise had wakened my father. The big door creaked as I opened it and looked up at the quivering maze of shadows on the ceiling. Somebody on the bed was snoring and it seemed to be all right. I slipped into my cot and waited for several minutes, then got up again and replaced the orange in the toe of the stocking and carefully put the other gifts on top of it. As soon as I reached my cot again I fell asleep with the sudden fatigue of children.

(28) The room was full of light when I woke up; not sunlight but the grey luminosity of filtered light reflected off snow. My parents were sitting up in bed and Chester was standing inside the door with our breakfast. My father was trying to smile under his bandages and Chester had a grin so big it showed the gap in his front teeth. The moment I had been worrying about was finally here.

(29) The first thing I must do was display enthusiasm for my parents' sake. I went to my stocking and emptied it on my cot while Chester watched me out of the corner of his eye. Last of all the orange rolled out.

(30) "I bet it ain't real," Chester said.

(31) My parents said nothing as he reached over and held it up to the light.

(32) "No," he said. "It ain't real, " and dropped it on the cot again. Then he put his hand into his pocket and with an effort managed to extract a medium sized orange. "Look at mine," he said. "Look what it says right here."

(33) On the skin of the orange, printed daintily with someone's pen, were the words, Produce of Portugal.

(34) "So my old man's been talkin' to Santy Claus, just like Mrs. Urquhart said."

(35) There was never any further discussion in our family about whether Santa Claus was real or not real.

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