Magic: a reflection by Abbey Chambers

Photo by Abbey Chambers

It’s Christmas morning. I’m in the living room, in the midst of the Santa-induced wreckage, helping my son with his new, massive 4-foot-tall Hot Wheels garage when my nine-year-old—my oldest—comes up from the basement. For the past hour or more, she has been working diligently to assemble the new LEGO sets that Santa brought her. 

“Something’s wrong,” she says to me, visibly upset.

“With what? What do you mean?” I ask. 

“With my LEGOs. There’s popcorn in the box.” 

“What??” I ask, totally confused. “Popcorn? What are you talking about?”

“Come see.”

I follow her to the basement, sighing and slightly annoyed at this fresh inconvenience. I have so much to do before we can head to my parents’ house where we’ll celebrate another Christmas. 

“See? It’s not right,” she says, pointing at a pile of LEGOs on the basement floor. 

I struggle to understand what’s happened as I stare at the most random assortment of LEGO pieces you could imagine. 

“These came out of here?” I ask, holding up the box for the LEGO Friends Pet Day Care Center that “Santa” brought her. 

“Yes,” she says, gravely serious. 

These are clearly not the right parts.

There are LEGO pieces that look like vehicle parts and say “POLICE.” There is a small piece of black fabric that looks like a LEGO Batman cape. There are Barbie pieces and accessories. There is a used sucker stick with reddish-pink sucker residue still on it. There is a random piece of bright pink ribbon. There is a marble. And—yes—there are pieces of popped popcorn. 

WTF?? I think as I pick through the pile. 

I conclude that someone must have purchased the original LEGO Friends set, taken the correct pieces out, apparently replaced them with whatever was on hand, and returned the set to get their money back. 

Dammit. Why do people do this? 

My husband and I had scoured the internet, and I had driven across town to the only store in Central Indiana that had the set in-stock—this specific set that she asked Santa for—to make sure we had it in time for Christmas. She didn’t ask for much for Christmas, but she asked for this. 

Saddened, I think, Surely this is the end of Santa for my daughter. This is the moment when she stops believing. What explanation could I possibly give her to allow her to hold onto the magic just a little longer? 

I mean, sure, at nine years old it’s perhaps time that she figures out that there’s no actual Santa, but I don’t want this to be the way she finds out, getting duped by some crook. 

But then, my sweet, deeply empathetic, generous girl says in the most heartfelt voice, “I think the elf who did this must have been having a really bad day.” And I realize that she’s seeing this from a completely different perspective from me. 

She isn’t seeing herself as getting duped or shorted. She isn’t imagining herself as a victim of some selfish malevolence. She isn’t jumping to the conclusion that Santa must be fake because he could never make a mistake like this. Nope. Instead, she concludes that an elf was simply struggling on the day it put her toy together and made a mistake as a result.

A simple mistake. 

I have to simultaneously stifle a chuckle and choke down a lump forming in my throat. I’m stunned, partly by this pile of assorted LEGOs and trash in front of me, and partly by how sad I am for her. But mostly I’m surprised in the best possible way by her reaction. What an incredibly kind way to handle such disappointment. 

This is probably a moment she’ll remember for the rest of her life—the Christmas when an elf messed up her gift—but I know there’s a lesson in here for me, too. I’m angered at the selfishness behind someone’s action, but I’m also so proud of and impressed by her reaction. Here she is, imagining a good explanation for this. Someone had a bad moment, a bad day, made a bad choice, and that deserves forgiveness and understanding. 

Obviously, this is not actually a case of an elf having a really bad day, but my daughter’s generous spirit makes me realize that maybe this is a case of someone not having enough to give to their own little girl for Christmas, and so they stole something from the multi-million-dollar corporations that can probably afford the loss. 

I suppose this thing that someone has done has hurt us a little too, but we cope with it. 
“What are we going to do?” my daughter asks me, wide-eyed and worried. 

I lie to her. I say, “We can mail this back to Santa. We can send it to the same address that we put on your Santa letter, and we’ll just buy you the set. It’ll be okay.”

She chokes back tears of relief that not only can the problem be solved, but also she will still get the LEGO set that she was so looking forward to building. 

“Okay,” she says. “Thank you, Mommy.”

My cynical heart melts. 

And, just like that, Santa lives another day in her beautiful, forgiving, unconditionally loving little nine-year-old heart. 

And I am reminded of what true kindness and understanding are like. They’re like magic. Totally accessible, powerfully humane, wonderfully generous magic that all of us have the ability to harness in ourselves and bestow on others at any time, not just at Christmastime. Such magic, if each of us tapped into it the way my little girl did in this crucial moment that could have led to bitterness and anger, could truly change the world. It wouldn’t take much. Just each of us choosing again and again to respond to things with kindness and understanding, and the world would be a very different, more peaceful, beautiful, and loving place. 

Sounds like a good resolution for the New Year. 

Abbey Chambers is a consultant and researcher who studies socioeconomic inequities and exclusions in economic development and policymaking.