This is an opinion column.

My reactions on Christmas morning never met my mother’s expectations. Later in life, she expressed her disappointment with my measured response after she stayed up all night wrapping gifts. It also explains the year she gifted me a shiitake mushroom log. It’s tough being the most disappointing boy on Christmas, but I need to explain why.

I suspected a December conspiracy from my earliest memory. The whole Santa thing never sat well with me. If I behaved myself, an old man from the North Pole would break into my house via the chimney and leave me gifts which oddly matched my personal preferences.

That is objectively creepy by any standard. In America, we put old men who have suspicious knowledge of unrelated young children on watch lists; we do not lionize them. Santa gets milk and cookies for his efforts.

My parents repeatedly dismissed my efforts to start a fire in the fireplace on Christmas Eve just to see what would happen. If anyone else came down that chimney on any other night, my dad would shoot them or at least hit them with a baseball bat. Something was deeply off.

If that wasn’t confusing enough, we were simultaneously taught that the birth of Jesus was the reason for the season. As our gifts sat brilliantly displayed within our view on Christmas morning, my father would read the account of Christ’s birth from the second chapter of Luke. Those were the longest 52 verses ever read in human history.

My mind struggled with the collision of sound theology and American consumerism. God gave us a path to salvation in the person of Jesus Christ, so I got the new Nintendo in celebration from Santa Claus who wasn’t particularly religious.

Most kids wouldn’t have taken the time to think about how a Nintendo Power Glove ended up in their living room. I was not most kids. I needed to solve the mystery.

To that end, I methodically approached my gifts, opened them gingerly, and issued general words of appreciation that I assumed would be received by Santa, Jesus, or my parents. I watched for tells from the adults which might provide precious information. I doubted that my younger brothers and sister were in on the conspiracy, but they never had my reservations.

My grandfather recognized my growing suspicion and took extreme measures to address it one Christmas. He climbed on the roof, made strange howling sounds, and rang jingle bells in the middle of the night. He should have probably told the other adults because everyone in the house was terrified.

When visiting my great grandmother, my family hired a Santa to stop by the house. In tears, I ran into the bedroom and locked the door. “I know he’s not real, but he looks soooo real,” I cried. I had long suspected my family of being Santa, but that man was not related to me. That man set back my Christmas investigation for years.

As time passed, the Biblical rationale for Christmas remained unchanged. I did however learn that the laws of physics posed real challenges for both flying reindeer and entering a modern home through the chimney. My parents eventually let me in on the secret that Santa Claus was representative of a spirit of generosity and not an actual home intruder.

How could that possibly allay my concerns?

Jesus opened a way for us to be made right before God, and the adults in my family honored that by sitting upon an annual throne of merry lies. If I didn’t behave myself, Santa would deliver a lump of coal instead of baseball cards. When you’re an adult you can apparently lie to children with impunity as long as you leverage them with gifts to keep the charade going.

We wonder what’s wrong with American politics. People will optimistically endure political deception and irresponsibility as long as they get goodies out of the deal. You know where we learned that? Santa Claus.

As a young teenager, I couldn’t decide whether to emancipate my siblings from the shackles of deception or keep the gift gravy train rolling in my direction. A new bike and TPX baseball bat were quite compelling.

My mom apparently hoped for me to express jubilation at what amounted to hush money. When all my siblings were finally in on the act, I felt marginally better. We stopped watching the Santa tracker on the local news channel. The Gospel remained a centerpiece even if the Santa ruse became mostly muscle memory.

When my wife and I began having children, we didn’t ditch Santa. I knew my family loved me enough to create such a magical fiction even if I could have personally used a little more communication. We did tell my boys quite early that Santa is an entertaining personification of generosity that we need to embody all year long. My boys are completely fine with a real Santa not breaking and entering. It makes sense to them, and it’s consistent with our faith.

My family’s celebration of God’s unfailing love for humanity remains the focus of the season for us. As disappointing as my muted gift responses were, my mother now takes great joy at her grandsons squirming as we read the biblical account of the first Christmas before opening presents. We hold our family close, we laugh, and we appreciate the blessing of this season in our lives.

If you take away nothing from this, remember that your coldly rational children deserve better than mushroom logs and have a Merry Christmas.

Smith is a recovering political attorney with three boys, two dogs, and an extremely patient wife. He engages media, business, and policy through the Triptych Foundation and Triptych Media. Please direct outrage or agreement to csmith@al.com or @DCameronSmith on Twitter.

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