A/N: Merry Christmas Eve Day! Both an eve and a day... it's a Christmas miracle. :) But seriously, I hope everyone is having a fantastic Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, whatever it is you celebrate. I had thoughts of trying to post another few chapters of my Christmas-based fic, The Twelve Bones of Christmas, but life got in the way and that didn't happen. I guess that little thing I saw floating off into the abyss was my dream of getting that fic finished before tomorrow! However, I haven't been totally unproductive in the realm of writing, which brings me to this little piece.
I, like many of you, had an older brother growing up. And he was a jerk. We are very close now and get along great, but he was a terror to me when we were kids. (To be fair, I was probably horrible to him too, but of course I have little memory of that.) When I was 4 years old, he decided for whatever reason to reveal to me that Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny were not real, they were a big fat lie. Wasn't he just a peach?
Anyway, there is a point to that little piece of nostalgia. Today when I was at work, I heard several parents threaten their small children with, "If you don't stop _______, Santa isn't going to come bring you presents tonight!" It got me thinking... at what age do normal children (without the influence of their tyrannical older brother) find out about Santa Claus, and how? How do parents explain that to their kids? How do parents justify the belief in other "unseen" celebrities, like Jesus, but maintain that Santa is a lie? It got me thinking, and then this one-shot popped into my head. :) I sincerely hope you enjoy it, and that you all have a very merry Christmas!
Slush pelted the windshield of Booth's SUV as he and Brennan idled in traffic on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Half a mile ahead of them, a six-car pileup that had effectively brought traffic to a grumbling halt on this Christmas Eve Day—a Christmas miracle in its own right.
"What are you smiling about?" Brennan asked Booth as he grinned at the memory of his drug-induced mania four years ago, when he and the squints had been locked up together in the Jeffersonian. He shook his head.
"Nothing," he said with a chuckle. They were silent for a while, until another thought occurred to Booth. "Hey, have you ever wondered why they call it a parkway when you don't park on it?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.
"No," she said blankly, staring at him from the passenger's seat. "Why?"
"Well it's kind of funny, isn't it?" Booth asked, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as their car inched forward for a moment, before stopping again. "I mean, you drive on a driveway… shouldn't you park on a parkway?"
"Generally not," Brennan said. "Barring circumstances such as these, that is, where we are essentially parked on a parkway." Booth rolled his eyes.
"It's word play, Bones," he explained. "You know, like, why does night fall but never break, and day breaks but never falls?"
"Or," Parker chirped from the back seat, holding his school bag over his lap, "why does a nose run, and feet smell?" Booth reached into the back and high-fived his son.
"That's it," he said. "See, Bones, that's what I'm talking about. Word play. Fun. You know… fun? That thing you never do or have any of?" Brennan swatted his arm lightly, shaking her head and repressing a smile.
"I do have fun," she said. "Every year I travel internationally to take part in an archaeological dig. That's fun." Booth made a face and looked into the back seat at his son.
"Digging up rocks in the middle of the desert? Not fun," he said, making an extravagantly ugly face and prompting Parker to erupt in a fit of laughter. Brennan shook her head, smiling at the two Booth boys and resting against the window, looking out. They had just left the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building after tying up the loose ends on their most recent case, and were on their way to eat when Rebecca had called—she was going to be stuck in court for the rest of the day, and wouldn't be able to pick Parker up from his grandmother's and bring him to Booth. Booth asked if it was okay with her if they swung by Rebecca's mom's to get the boy before they ate, and of course it was—while she was generally not a big fan of children, she found Booth's son to be quite endearing. Much like his father.
"It's been so warm lately," Brennan said out of the blue, watching the watery sleet roll down the window. While they could generally count on a white Christmas, or at least an icy one, for the past week they'd had more cold rain than anything. No snow, no ice, not even so much as a frosty covering on the grass in front of her apartment complex.
"Yeah it has," Booth agreed, watching the wipers flick back and forth over the windshield, clearing their view. It hadn't changed much in the past half-hour; they still stared at the back of the same car, with the same Honor Student bumper stickers lavished across the back. Booth vocally hated people who plastered their cars with those things, but secretly felt that if Parker ever earned the right to one, he would buy ten.
"Mom says it's global warming," Parker said from the back. "She said when I'm a grown up it's never going to snow, it's just going to be like Florida all the time."
"That's not true," Booth said. "We're just having a warm snap. Before New Year's you'll have snow on the ground, okay?" Parker nodded, looking vaguely out the window.
"Dad?" he asked. Booth looked at his son from the rear-view mirror.
"Yeah?"
"Mom also said Santa isn't real." Booth let out a surprised hack.
"She said what?" he asked. Parker sighed loudly.
"Sam Gables said that his dad said that Santa wasn't real, he was fake, and I told him he was wrong but he said no, you just lied to me. So I asked mom and she said Mr. Gables was right, that Santa isn't real, he's just make-believe." Brennan could see the sadness in Booth's eyes as his son relayed the tale to him, and she felt for him—while she didn't think it prudent to lie to children, she knew Booth wanted to preserve his son's innocence, and to see his son acknowledge the lie of Santa Claus was like watching one of those layers of childhood peel away.
"Parker, I…"
"Dad, if Santa's not real, does that mean Jesus is fake too?" Booth took in a sharp breath, though Brennan wasn't surprised. Parker was a smart kid, a logical one even—and the assumption that Jesus was fake, in light of the Santa revelation, was a logical one to make.
"No!" Booth said, probably louder than he intended to, for Brennan and Parker both flinched. "No, Park, Jesus is real. He's real. Santa is… well, your mom's right, Santa doesn't really come deliver presents. But Jesus is real."
"You said Santa was real," Parker said, almost accusatorily. Booth's eyes fell to the steering wheel, and Brennan could sense the way the boy's words had stung him.
"Santa was real," Brennan said suddenly, interjecting before Booth could think of something to say. He and Parker both looked up at her, curiously.
"He was?" Parker asked Brennan, twisting the material of his jacket in his small fingers.
"Yes," Brennan said. "He was, but he died."
"How? Did he fall off a roof?" Parker asked, eyes wide. Brennan smirked, and shook her head.
"No, Parker, he didn't. Santa never rode a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer or had a toy shop in the North Pole where he assembled toys for children, as is traditional in Western lore…"
"In what?" Parker asked, but Brennan ignored the question.
"… but the man the Santa story is based off of, Saint Nicholas, was a real person." Brennan did not look to Booth, but could see him beaming at her out of the corner of her eye nonetheless.
"So if Santa—"
"Saint Nicholas," Brennan said, correcting the boy.
"—Saint Nicholas," he said, "didn't have reindeer or make toys or squeeze down chimneys… what did he do?"
"Well, the real Saint Nicholas was a man who lived in Byzantine Anatolia…"
"In what?" Booth and Parker both asked simultaneously.
"Modern-day Turkey," she clarified. "According to Christian belief, Saint Nicholas was a man who lived in the province of Myra, who gave anonymous gifts to the poor. In one story, Nicholas saw three boys lured into a butcher's house during a famine, where they were slaughtered and butchered, and placed in a curing barrel to be sold as ham…"
"Oh my God," Booth said, repulsed.
"Cool," Parker whispered, leaning in as Brennan recounted the tale.
"… but after the butcher went to bed, Saint Nicholas prayed over the remains of the boys and brought them back to life. In another story, Saint Nicholas anonymously donated three bags of gold to the three daughters of a poor Anatolian man. Because he could not afford their dowry, due to social custom, they would have likely become prostitutes."
"What's a prostitute?" Parker asked.
"A prostitute is—"
"Not important!" Booth interjected before Brennan could continue. "On with the story." She shrugged and continued.
"Anyway, the story claims that Saint Nicholas threw the bags of gold down their chimney at night, where they fell into one of the daughter's stockings that she had hung by the fire to dry. The daughters, with their dowry money, were able to wed. After his death in 342 AD, many other anonymous gifts to the poor were also attributed to him. To this day, every culture in the world affected by Christianity celebrates some form of gift giving in honor of Saint Nicholas. Though in Germanic cultures, it is difficult to tell where the fable of Odin ends and that of Saint Nicholas begins."
"Wow," Parker uttered softly, leaning forward so far his chin nearly rested on his knees. "So Santa Claus was real."
"Saint Nicholas was real," Brennan corrected again. "Whether any of his deeds were actually performed is questionable, but his existence as a person is definite."
"You see, Parker," Booth said. "Santa Claus is just how we remember Saint Nicholas. The reindeer, the elves, that stuff is just make-believe. It's fun, but it's not real. But Saint Nicholas was a real person, and so was Jesus."
"So all the presents that Santa brought me last year?" Parker asked. Booth sighed.
"Me and your mom," Booth admitted.
"And the milk and cookies?"
"Mostly me," Booth said. Brennan smirked.
"And the guy at the mall?"
"Just a fat guy in a costume," Booth said. Parker nodded.
"So Santa isn't real," he said slowly, trying to assemble all of the facts. "But Saint Nicholas was. And when we pretend Santa is real… we're just remembering all the good things Saint Nicholas did?"
"Exactly!" Booth said, bringing his hands down on the steering wheel and inadvertently hitting the horn. It sounded loudly, startling all three of them, and caused a chain reaction of irate honks and finger flashes.
"And Jesus was real too, then," Parker said, connecting the dots in his little head. Brennan opened her mouth, then after a second thought decided to just shut it.
"Yes," Booth said, sounding immensely relieved. "Jesus is real. That's what Christmas is all about, buddy. It's not getting presents, it's about giving to others, and remembering the gift God gave us. Right?"
"Right," Parker affirmed, leaning back in his seat and smiling broadly at his father and Brennan. The smile faded into a yawn, and once the car had gotten moving again down the parkway, the boy had settled into a nap, his fears and frustrations diminished. Booth looked back at his sleeping boy in the rear-view mirror, then turned to Brennan.
"Thanks, Bones," he whispered. She waved him off. He shook his head.
"No, really," he said. "Thank you. I know you don't believe in God and all that but you stepped in and gave Parker something to believe in. You did a lot for him right there, and that meant a lot to me. So thank you."
"You're welcome," Brennan said, leaning back into her own seat and watching him as he drove. "Parker is a smart kid, he needs answers. I get that."
"You think he's gonna keep asking me questions like that?" Booth asked.
"He's very intelligent, Booth. The older he gets, the more answers he's going to want," Brennan said, thinking back on her own childhood. It was the unsung burden of the intelligent mind—you asked more questions than were answers, and couldn't accept less than the truth. Blissful ignorance simply wouldn't do. For as long as she could remember, she had always felt the gnawing of unanswered questions, of questions that had no answer. There could be no just because, for her or for a bright child like Parker. It would become both the boy's gift and his burden.
"I guess it's a good thing I've got you then, huh?" Booth said, smiling at his partner.
"Yeah," she said, looking down at her lap. "You do."
"Would it be too cheesy if I said having a partner like you was the best gift of all?" Booth asked, and Brennan rolled her eyes.
"Yes," she said emphatically. "Yes, it would be."
"Then I'll spare you," he said, giving her a charming grin.
"Now that," Brennan said, "is the best gift of all."
A/N: And there it is. :) Just an FYI, I am aware that there are several varying stories about the works of Saint Nicholas of Myra, the "original Santa Claus" if you will. I kind of picked and chose the versions I wanted Brennan to explain to Parker, so if you read them and said to yourself, That's not right, just know that there are many stories of Saint Nicholas. The ones in this fic are just some examples of them.
Now, in the spirit of giving, how about leaving a review and letting me know what you think of this shot. :) Merry Christmas!