Someone Else Brought It

When children stop believing in Santa Claus, most of them are fine. A landmark study found that the parents were the ones who grieved.

Why do several hundred million adults, every December, buy the gifts, hide them, assemble them after midnight, and then hand the credit to a stranger? Someone Else Brought It takes that strange, familiar ritual seriously.

Drawing on history, psychology, and hard-won parental honesty, Nakel Nikiema traces how a fourth-century bishop became an American gift-bringer: Pintard and Irving's invented Dutch past, the 1823 poem, Thomas Nast's Civil War Santa, Virginia's 1897 letter, and the Coca-Cola myth that almost everyone believes. Then he asks the harder question: what does Santa do for us?

For children, he supplies wonder, a first experiment in independent investigation, and an initiation. For parents, he supplies something more load-bearing: a way to prove provision, a cover for money, and membership in the only secret society most adults will ever join. Nikiema confronts the costs too: the naughty list, the unequal Santa, the hidden labor, and the honest objection that it is all a lie.

Thoughtful, surprising, and humane, this is a book for any parent who has stood in the dark on Christmas Eve and wondered why it matters so much.