Image Source: Flickr user jprice325

Is the idea of Santa Claus really that extraordinary? Isn’t he just a man who lives up north and makes toys in a workshop? Isn’t this pretty much the day-to-day reality of the Inuit people? Yes, but while the Inuit people do indeed live up north, have workshops and even keep reindeer, there is one essential difference between them and Santa Claus: magic.

And magic is a big deal.

The northern world holds a special kind of magic. Ask any Inuit person and they will confirm that their people have been witness to this magic for thousands of years. As witnesses though, they are only bystanders. Santa, on the other hand, uses this magic to make the impossible possible every Christmas.

When one is a child, Santa and his Christmas undertaking makes total sense. Making millions of toys and delivering them in a single night is easy to conceive. Then as one gets a little older and a little wiser to the supposed “ways of the world,” doubt starts to set in. How does Santa get around the world so quickly? Can reindeer actually fly? Is the magic of Christmas a real thing?

As an adult, I can personally confirm the last question. Yes. The magic of Christmas is a real, actual thing. It exists and it’s definitely what Santa uses to pull-off the Big Day.

Everyone knows, of course, that Santa has a rule about being “naughty or nice,” but he also has another rule, one that is perhaps even more important. If one tricks Santa and sees him in the flesh, person-to-person, the magic of Christmas can be ruined. Probably, there are dire consequences to this (a lifetime on the naughty list? Santa losing his magical powers?? The end of Christmas as we know it???), but nobody knows for sure what they are, as nobody has ever actually seen Santa in real life. Even as adults, we all know about the magic of Christmas but we’re still in the same boat as children, resorting to circumstantial evidence as proof of his existence. But some pretty convincing evidence can be had.

So as an adult, I’ve decided to use my adult brain and put together a few crafty ways to observe or prove – as close as possible – that Santa Claus is real:

1. As a kid, I once set a trap for Santa. After my parents went to bed on Christmas Eve, I sneaked downstairs, up into the fireplace and strung a string across. The next morning, to my sheer amazement, the string dangled loose, broken by the Man as he came down the chimney. An easy trap to replicate

2. Speaking of chimneys, there have been reports that occasionally, in Santa’s hurry, he’ll forget to cleanup his ashy (or snowy) boot prints that lead from the chimney, to the tree and back. Keep an eye out for these

3. As mentioned above, Santa is in a fantastic hurry on Christmas Eve, so much so that he doesn’t usually land his sleigh on the rooftops. He just keeps it hovering, the reindeer at ready. Sometimes though, the reindeer get tired and need a break. If your house is one of the lucky ones, there’s a chance you’ll find sleigh tracks, hoof prints or even reindeer poop on the roof. How do you know if it’s reindeer poop? You’ll know because it’s quite similar to that of horses

4. When I was little, I had a friend who almost caught Santa. He thought he heard a jingle on Christmas Eve but knew better than to look out his bedroom window. Christmas morning though, he discovered that some jingle-bells fell off Santa’s sleigh and landed near his house. My friend was the envy of all of us and last I checked, nearly thirty years later, he still has those bells. So if you hear a jingle of bells, be sure to check outside in the morning

5. Want to know an amazing fact about reindeer? Their hair is similar in make-up to dog hair. Not all dogs, mind you, but dogs that were bred to live in cold climates. This is important because occasionally a tuft of reindeer hair is left behind on a rooftop or lawn. Proving that the hair is from a reindeer is difficult and requires a trained specialist, but it can be done. If you discover some strange hair on Christmas morning, take it to a local taxidermist, a zookeeper or someone at a natural history museum and you just might have confirmation that reindeer were on your rooftop

6. Did you know that if you write a letter to Santa Claus that he will actually write back? And it really is Santa because who else would be able to respond to millions of children, all over the world? Only the magic of Christmas could allow for this. Writing to Santa is free, no stamps needed but be sure to include your return address so that his elves can send the letter back before Christmas! Santa’s mailing address:

Santa Claus
North Pole
H0H 0H0
Canada

7) The magic of Christmas is so wondrous that proving Santa is real has become a big thing in some sectors. Did you know there’s an entire military movement to try and prove the existence of Santa Claus? Every Christmas Eve, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) fires-up their radar and tracks him all over the earth. It’s a big, awesome deal that best of all, can be viewed online

8) Lastly – for the ultra devoted – there is a book written by a man obsessed with proving Santa. Robert Sullivan spent years travelling the globe, researching every possible aspect of Santa. Nearly a hundred pages of his amazing discoveries can be found in “Flight of the Reindeer: The True Story of Santa Claus and His Christmas Mission.” Almost all bookstores carry it during the holiday season

The above are only a few suggestions on how to prove the existence of Santa Claus. There are, I’m sure, many other ways but the ones listed above I can personally vouch for, having done many of them as a child. If you have a few Santa-proving techniques yourself, please share them in the comments section below

Merry Christmas and happy Santa hunting!