"La Ética en el País de los Elfos" es el título de uno de los capítulos de Ortodoxia de Chesterton. Ahí defiende la importancia de las historias de fantasía y cómo es que una persona madura no puede vivir sin fantasías, utopías, ideales. No por que se moviera entre nubes o en el mundo imaginario, sino por que la vida cotidiana está llena de la magia propia de los cuentos. Por ejemplo, si es fantástico que un príncipe se haya convertido en una bestia por hosco e insolidario, es igual de sorprendente que haya sido rescatado por alguien que le ofreció su confianza y cariño aún cuando no lo merecía. Por eso Chesterton nos recuerda que se puede creer en los cuentos de hadas y en las fantasías, no por que existan más dragones que princesas, sino por que nos introducen y acostumbran a vivir en un mundo que parece regido por esa magia de los cuentos. Por ejemplo, Santa Claus. Si la felicidad va unida a la gratitud, dice el escritor inglés:
«yo me sentía agradecido, aunque difícilmente sabía a quién estarlo. Los niños están agradecidos cuando Santa Claus pone en sus calcetines juguetes y dulces. ¿No podría yo estarle agradecido a Santa Claus cuando él ha puesto en mi calcetín el regalo de dos milagrosas piernas? Le agradecemos a la gente regalos de cumpleaños tales como cigarros y chanclas. ¿Y yo no puedo darle las gracias a nadie por el regalo de cumpleaños de mi nacimiento? (Ortodoxia)»
En otro lugar, desarrolla más esta idea. En su infancia, la costumbre era dejar un calcetín para que Santa Claus la llenara la noche de Navidad con regalos, juguetes, dulces o monedas. Pues bien,
«Lo que me ha pasado ha sido todo lo contrario a lo que parece ser la experiencia de la mayoría de mis amigos. En lugar de aminorarse, Santa Claus ha sido cada vez más importante hasta llenarla casi toda. Sucedió de esta manera.
Cuando era niño me enfrentaba a un fenómeno que requería una explicación. Al final de mi cama, colgaba un calcetín vacío y en la mañana aparecía lleno. Yo personalmente no había hecho nada para producir esos juguetes. No había fabricado los regalos, ni los había armado, ni ayudado a construirlos. Ni siquiera había sido lo suficientemente bueno para merecerlos.
Y me explicaron que existía cierto ser al que la gente llamaba Santa Claus, quien me tenía cariño... Creíamos en alguien que bueno y generoso que nos daba juguetes a cambio de nada. Y, como he dicho, sigo creyendo en una persona así. Sólo que he ampliado mi idea de él.
De niño sólo me preguntaba quién dejaba los juguetes en mis calcetines; ahora me pregunto quién fue quien colocó los calcetines en la cama, la cama en la habitación, la habitación en la casa, la casa en la tierra y quién colocó este gran planeta en el vacío del cielo.
Cuando era niño sólo daba gracias a Santa Claus por unos muñecos y algunas galletas. Ahora le agradezco las estrellas, los rostros que veo en la calle, el vino y el inmenso mar. De niño me parecía sorprendente y encantador poder encontrar con un regalo tan grande para llenar la mitad del calcetín. Ahora me pasmo por la mañana, al caer en la cuenta de un regalo tan grande que necesita dos calcetines para sostenerse, y me divierte que lo haya dejado desnudo de ahí hacia arriba. Hablo del inmenso y ridículo regalo que soy yo mismo. De quien no puedo dar una mejor explicación más que algún Santa Claus me ha dado como regalo, ha hecho de mi un regalo, en un gesto de una peculiar y fantástica buena voluntad».
Hoy es cumpleaños de mi hermana. Si hubiera alguien que no creyera en Santa Claus, tendríamos que inventarlo sólo para agradecerle dejó en casa a mi Teresita.
Aquí está el texto completo de Chesterton:
My experience of Santa Claus
G. K. Chesterton
At the close of G.K.C.'s centenary year we publish this essay by courtesy of his literary executor, Dorothy Collins.
The near approach of Christmas (which the eternal idealism of mankind has expressed in the proverbial phrase which describes it as "Coming") makes it particularly appropriate that I should deal with the existence and peculiarities of Santa Claus. But this is even more necessary because he is the one example of a matter of unimpeachable commonsense. Sceptics may throw doubt upon the existence of pixies or brownies; ingenious doubts may be raised even against dragons. By dint of a little paradox and superficial sparkle people may make what looks like a plausible case against the existence of hippogriffs. Of mermaids, I confess that I have had doubts myself in early youth, and though I am sure about giants with three heads, yet this assurance is of the nature of a dim and delicate spiritual intuition. But about Santa Claus, at any rate, I am on perfectly solid ground. My conviction of his existence and beneficence began faintly in early childhood, and has continuously increased ever since.
It is the fashion with an enormous number of modern people to maintain, or rather to take for granted, that as the world has progressed it has come to believe less and less in spirits and more and more in materials. And in the same way it is their custom to maintain, or rather to take for granted, that as we go on in life from infancy to old age we believe less and less in Santa Claus. Both views are false, or at least insufficiently true. The truth is that progress, whether it be the progress of mankind from the cavern to the hotel, or the progress of an individual, as the florid clergyman expressed it, from the "bassinet to the sepulchre," is so motley and complicated a thing that by choosing instances and arguments with reasonable controversial care, one can represent it to have been anything at all. No doubt, one can make a plausible statement that our race has become more and more rationalistic, and less and less mystical; one can quote on its side the disappearance of medicine men, of tests at Oxford and Cambridge, of witch-finding and the Irish Church Establishment and the introduction of books on psychology. But I would by the same method undertake plausibly to maintain that the world has been growing more and more red and less and less green. I could quote the introduction of pillar-boxes, terracotta statuettes, and socialist neckties, and I could quote the disappearance of Fenian societies, country districts, green poplin, and the costume of Robin Hood. In the same way I could make out that young people liked everything that was round, and that old people liked everything that was square, instancing on the one side boys eating buns and babies crying for the moon, and citing on the other the fondness of old gentlemen for cards, books, newspapers, and chess boards. In all these cases clearly our error would have been an insufficient breadth of experience and example. The modern popularity of green absinthe would have upset the first theory; the second would have sadly taken wing after the experiment of bringing a child into the neighbourhood of a square biscuit. In the same way there are scores of examples to upset the theory that a high civilisation has outgrown mysticism, examples which range from the philosophers of India to the palmists of Bond Street; and if an example be required to upset the theory that advancing years destroy our belief in Santa Claus, I beg most modestly to present myself as an exception.
What has happened to me has been the very reverse of what appears to be the experience of most of my friends. Instead of dwindling to a point, Santa Claus has grown larger and larger in my life until he fills almost the whole of it. It happened in this way. As a child I was faced with a phenomenon requiring explanation; I hung up at the end of my bed an empty stocking, which in the morning became a full stocking. I had done nothing to produce the things that filled it. I had not worked for them, or made them or helped to make them. I had not even been good— far from it. And the explanation was that a certain being whom people called Santa Claus was benevolently disposed towards me. Of course, most people who talk about these things get into a state of some mental confusion by attaching tremendous importance to the name of the entity. We called him Santa Claus, because everyone called him
Santa Claus; but the name of a god is a mere human label. His real name may have been Williams. It may have been the Archangel Uriel. What we believed was that a certain benevolent agency did give us those toys for nothing. And, as I say, I believe it still. I have merely extended the idea. Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stock ing by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void. Once I only thanked Santa Claus for a few dolls and crackers, now I thank him for stars and street faces and wine and the great sea. Once I thought it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it only went halfway into the stocking. Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it, and then leaves a great deal outside; it is the large and preposterous present of myself, as to the origin of which I can afford no suggestion except that Santa Claus gave it to me in a fit of peculiarly fantastic goodwill.
From "Black and White" (1904)
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