In just a few pages, Chris Van Allsburg dissects the central meaning of faith in his book, The Polar Express. Can we believe in something that is beyond the natural?

It is a story about the time that a child begins the process of giving up childish things just like Santa Claus. The little boy wants to continue to believe in Santa Claus even as his friends deny that existence of old Saint Nick.

As Christmas approaches, the boy hears a train and soon, he gets aboard to travel to the North Pole. The train is full of children dressed in pajamas and nightgowns signing Christmas Carols as well as eating candy. This train is for the believers.

As the Children enter the North Pole, one child is picked to receive the first gift. Santa picks our narrator and all he ask for is a silver bell from Santa's sleigh and that is what he receives. On the way home, he loses the bell only to regain it as a present on Christmas day.

How do we believe in the existence of Santa existence, when there is no proof? When he first loses the bell, he fears that he has lost the one sound that proves the existence of Christmas. When he finally opens the box that contains the bell on Christmas day, his parents first think that the little bell is broken but when the boy rings the bell; it produces a sound that they never heard before.

There are two morals to this story. The first is that greatest gifts may be the simplest. The second moral is that to believe in Christmas requires childlike faith. Even the boy's little sister cease to hear the bell as she gets older for she has lost her faith in Santa Claus.

Often, as we get older, we lose faith in the simple things in life. Childlike faith is replaced by a complicated view of life that excludes the belief in the supernatural. If we can't feel it, touch it or see it; we can't believe. (A monotheist such as a Christian can understand this story. For belief in God is to believe in the supernatural without proof. We can't feel, touch or see God. We can surmise the existence of God but we can't totally prove it to a secular world. As Jesus reminds us, faith in God requires childlike faith.)

In The Polar Express, the boy looks for proof of Santa existence. He is given that proof in the form of a bell but this is only proof for believers. As his friends get older including his sister, the bell ceases to be proof of Santa for they no longer hear the chime of the bell. The boy concludes, "At one time most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them...Though I've grown old, the bell still rings for me as it does for all who truly believes."