Me and santa: a retrospective

The prompt at Writer’s Island for today was to write something about how we embrace this season.

Santa and me go way back. Some years we were thisclose.

Other years not so much.

Here I still believed, but not for much longer.

In December 1976, my family had just moved from Provo, Utah, to nearby Springville. We lived in a small, mouse-infested apartment above a weight station. On Christmas Eve, I was determined to stay up and watch Santa deliver the presents I knew were coming because I had been extra good all year. I waited quietly in bed, feigning sleep until I heard my parents go down for the night and then I snuck out to the living room from the bedroom I shared with my little brother Lee. Crawling on my hands and knees, I slowly backed myself into the gap between our couch and the wall behind it. I was almost completely hidden when I felt something move next to my leg and heard a loud snap. With a shriek I shot out from behind the couch—and then realized I had backed into a mousetrap. I shoved the trap under the couch and resumed my prime position for Santa surveillance. Sadly, I fell asleep before the man in red showed up.

By Christmas 1977, I was a jaded eight year-old chaperone for my nattily suspendered-and-plaid-pantsed brother (clearly still a believer).

Over a decade later, I became even more jaded when my mom took my youngest sister and I for Santa pictures at Northgate Mall in Seattle. I was a college freshman, and she was a year and a half. We camped out in line, sandwiched for what seemed forever between other people's toddlers melting down. At last it was our turn. I sat on Santa’s lap, and Meredith sat on mine. Right before the photographer snapped our picture, nasty old Santa copped a feel. Yeah. I waited for the flash, then shot him a dirty look as I whisked Meredith away as quickly as possible. All I could think was, at least better me than her.

Last year when Jimmy was three, Jim and I had The Santa Talk—you know, the one where we discussed whether we should inflict belief in Santa (and the inevitable emotional trauma at its termination) on our children. It had been long enough since the perverted Santa imposter incident that I didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. Eventually we decided in favor of a guilt-free Santa Claus, a benevolent Kris Kringle with no naughty-or-nice strings attached.

In the end, I’m glad Jim and I could agree Santa had a certain magic integral to our own childhoods—a miraculous magic of hope, humor, giving, and possibilities—and that we want our kids to have it, too.