Of course I would never admit that I even thought of this, so I appreciate the fora where I can write my ridiculous comment. Everybody kept joking that they were glad they weren't flying today, and I was thinking that my child was.
The topic of heaven is interesting. I could never understand why you would want to go there. When I was in about third grade I started seriously considering how I could ever find everybody in my family (including pets) if I did get to heaven one day. I would get this lonesome idea of wandering and looking endlessly for some familiar person. Then I started conflating Santa Claus, God, and all of these bearded benevolent old men in my mind-all of these entities supposed to be watching over me. I decided it was all too overwhelming, couldn't make sense of it, so moved on.
I guess my middle class kids could wonder about this, too, but would probably not think to: what do impoverished kids make of the fact that Santa gives them meager gifts while rich kids get go-karts and Xboxes?
My mother explained this to us one year when we were very badly off financially. Santa Claus knew that we were smarter than most other kids, and so would understand that Santa only had so much money to be spent on everyone, and so we shouldn't be greedy. If we got less expensive stuff, then there would be toys for the REALLY poor children as well. The rich, greedy, shallow kids needed expensive things because they weren't as smart and versatile as we were and couldn't cope otherwise.
