O TANNENBAUM

It was fun being decorated like a Christmas tree. It was for the party that Rhonda and Quinn threw at the family housing dorm, and I was a big hit with the students’ young children. (All under five.) I didn’t stand in one place, through, so people couldn’t place presents beneath me. Fenton took a picture and sent it to Tree back home, who replied with great mirth. She called me the daughter she’d never had. It was just a temporary costume, of course, as already my quills are growing back.
Back home, four-year-old Coney is at the stage where she’s asking questions about Santa. Every child goes through a stage of believing that lasts until about age six or seven, when the inherent contradictions of the story cause it to collapse. Still, it’s instructive as it teaches self-control for both carnivores and herbivores.
It the case of carnivores, that was the reason for Santa being the most tempting of targets: an elderly, overweight prey species clad in easy-to-spot bright red. Young predators had to balance the immediate gratification of eating Santa against the consequence of never receiving presents in the future. They learned that “good boys and girls” chose the long view, and thereby began to appreciate the benefits of conserving limited resources.
The custom of setting out plates of foliage for Santa to browse tries to do the same for herbivore children, but with less effectiveness. I was raised as a plant eater, and was told that if I ate Santa’s leaves he’d starve to death. With all that fat on him, I didn’t buy it. The little plate left on the fireplace wasn’t going to make that much of a difference to his survival! Still, I’m sure I’ll tell the same story to my children.
To the humans out there, I assume your Santa is human as well. Does he fulfill a similar role of influencing the behavior of human children?