Yes, and yes to the OP. It's very similar.

An older family member once asked my siblings and me, as older teenagers, whether we believed in Santa. We scoffed, laughed, and incredulously said of course not.

She responded that she believed in Santa, and she gave this explanation: Santa is a cultural shorthand for generosity. Do you believe in the spirit of giving? Do you want to see smiles on children's faces on Christmas morning? Do you want to make the people you love light up because you had special, almost supernatural, insight into their heart's desire and made it real?

I don't believe a magical man in a red suit gives presents and coal to kids. I similarly don't believe in a white bearded cloudy Jewish giant in the sky.

But I believe that there's something sublime and immaterial in the love we can have for one another, something only partially explained by ecologic survival pressures and biochemistry. I think there is something out there beyond what we can perceive on a daily basis, and for lack of a better lexicon, "spiritual" is as good a term as anyone for the realm of the imperceptible.

So I think there's a God, and I think there's a Santa. I don't understand either, and I think they're neither anything quite like we expect. And God the Creator is certainly an asshole sometimes. But I think there's Someone out there.