When I was a little kid I used to be taken by my mother to
the King of Prussia Mall to see Santa.
This was never my idea. I was
much too shy to speak to Santa directly as he was a big scary stranger. I understand how my mother would have assumed
that I would have seen Santa as a cuddly bear of a grandpa that would bring me
toys in his magic sleigh, but I just saw him as a big man with a prickly beard
that smelled like mothballs. I was not
afraid of the idea of Santa. I was
afraid of the actuality of Santa.
If you think about it for even a second, the idea is
ludicrous. Take a small boy to an unfamiliar
setting where he will meet the #1 rock star in the Kid World. This would be like taking a 12 year old girl
to see a member of One Direction and expecting her to keep her shit together. As a six year old, I just did not have the
faculties to play it cool and get in a real one-on-one with Santa to riff on my
holiday gift ideas. How could I have
been expected to have been placed in the lap of Mr. Claus and have to tell him
on cue about my material needs? That’s crazy talk. The parents are all freaking out with
flashbulbs going off. Kids in front of
you in line are crying. Why are they
crying? Should I be worried? What is expected of me? What’s the protocol here? Why won’t anyone tell me the protocol? It’s too much pressure.
I remember feeling like a baby when I was lifted onto Santa
by some sullen teenager that smelled like cigarettes. This was the early 1970s. Everyone smelled like cigarettes. Even Santa.
“How are you little boy?” I
couldn’t muster the courage or have the language to say “freaked out… I’m
really fucking freaked out”. I remember
seeing the elastic band that kept Santa’s beard attached to his face. Wait a minute. Who the hell is this? Santa wouldn’t have a fake beard. There was some chit chat back and forth where
Santa asked open ended questions and I croaked out one word answers. Very quickly I was whisked off of Santa’s lap
and given a plastic toy car. I would
have a similar experience in the 1990s when meeting Jennifer Love Hewitt at a
media event, but sadly I was not given a toy car or sit on her tiny lap.
I asked my mother about this fake beard. She scrambled. “Well, that is one of Santa’s helpers. He needs to have his helpers find out what
all the kids want.” This was a real
mindbender. I was unconvinced. Even then I became totally focused on the
logistics of such an undertaking. How
would the information be gathered? How
could his helper remember what everyone wanted for Christmas? I mean Santa, sure, but this guy? I don’t know about that. Then the obvious hit me. Hey, why would he dress like Santa? If he’s a helper, wouldn’t he be like an
elf? My mother, caught in this obvious
fabrication of hers kept spinning. “Well,
that’s just how they do it.” This
variation of the old mother ploy of “because I said so” had already failed to
hold much water. There were some serious
holes in this Santa Claus story.
I convened with my friends Michael and Christopher. Why my friends had names like West Village
interior designers I don’t know. Maybe
when I moved away and they entered middle school they switched over to “Mike”
and “Chris”. I hope so. Anyway, the three of us bandied about the
fake beard Santa Helper concept.
Christopher’s older brother Mike claimed there was no Santa Claus. While even then I regarded Mike as a damn
fool, he was older and had gathered some wisdom with his advanced age of 10 or
so. Our relationship had become strained
when he stole a Playboy Magazine from me that I had pilfered from my own father
only weeks before. This was probably the
single most valuable item in my entire neighborhood, and he denied he had it despite
Christopher’s urgent insistence he had seen it with his own eyes. That filthy son of a bitch. While a thief, he did know a thing or
two. Maybe this Santa thing was a hoax.
We all played the odds that year and followed through on all
Santa related activities. Two days
before Christmas I did a routine house search for gifts, as that is what one
did when one was six and close to Christmas.
The pressure is so high you can cut it with a knife. What would be under the tree? Would you get that key gift you had been
lobbying for all winter? That’s when it
happened. In a closet hidden by some clothes I found the
motherload. There were the wrapped
gifts. The jig was up. There was no Santa. It was all bullshit. I played it cool though. I kept it quiet until after we had opened our
gifts under the tree Christmas morning.
I remember feeling very adult when I told my parents I knew
there was no Santa Claus. At first they
offered resistance back. I retorted with
the now well rehearsed “Santa counter argument” citing the fake beard, the
gifts in the closet, and the buzz on the streets amongst the older kids. I was a real man about town, a worldly guy in
the know. “Don’t tell your brother!” My mother looked sad. She knew that a valuable part of childhood
had died and probably felt responsible because of the cheap hippie Santa she
took me to that year. I wish I would
have been aware enough to have told her it wasn’t her fault. I went right then from feeling really good
about myself to really bad, and I didn’t even know why.
Christmas was never as good again.
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