Have you ever stayed up on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa to arrive? You search the house for a chimney, or the back door if you don’t have one. You ready yourself, not with a bowl of cookies and a glass of warm milk, but with a camera and a big sign engraved with the word, “Gotcha.” Suddenly, you hear a noise coming from the Christmas tree. You run to investigate it and find something truly disturbing.

When most people discover the heinous lie your parents told you as a child, it is not nearly as dramatic as this, but it is just as impactful. Maybe one day your parents confessed their dark secret, or maybe you realized the impossibility for Santa Claus to deliver roughly 2.2 billion gifts to every child in a single night.

However, throughout history many people have seen Santa. Whether it was in the 4th century Roman Empire, when Myran Bishop St. Nicholas was secretly throwing gold into homes at night, or the observation made by the Apollo 8 crew on Christmas Eve in 1968, when they saw Santa orbiting around Earth. Perhaps it was the red-draped, horse-riding bishop named Sinterklaas dropping gifts in the shoes of children, or the classic mall Santa seen every year taking photos with children around the world.

Whether through myth or historical events, Santa has always managed to make an appearance to someone at some point in time during Christmas. Even today kids can send letters to Santa through Canada Post and USPS, and track Santa on Google using the Google Santa Tracker.

However, if you ask anyone over the age of 9, they will tell you that Santa is a lie told by parents all over the world. Why do parents lie about Christmas? Children wouldn’t mind being given gifts by parents if they hadn’t been told Santa delivered them instead.

Many parents say that Santa makes Christmas seem more magical. However, even without Santa, the glistening snow, the excitement to receive presents, and the encouragement to care for others are more than enough to separate Christmas from any other holiday. This firmly places it in everyone’s mind as the most wonderful time of the year.

Santa is real in the same way that an Australian drop bear is. You cannot see it, but you know it’s there. During Christmas you can feel Santa’s presence all around you. It permeates through everything from simple interactions between friends and families to huge differences in the attitudes of large groups of people.

For anyone who has allowed themselves to be taken away by the goodwill of Christmas, it is difficult to argue that Santa, who spreads cheer throughout the holiday, doesn’t exist, spreading good cheer throughout the holiday.