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The Santa Scam
Sam's funny, poignant, and of course well-told Christmas Monkey Story probably inspired many of us to recall that early
experience of childhood disillusionment - uncovering the Santa Scam.
My parents, farm kids both, raised in the hard days of the depression, didn't push the Santa myth very hard.
I think I was about five when, as we returned from Christmas shopping one night, I kept hearing occasional metallic
sounds coming from where Dad was walking along in the shadows on Mom's other side. I asked what the noises were
& got "Noise? What noise?" and "Oh, I don't know what that is." Christmas morning brought a brand new
tricycle. I don't recall whether Santa was given credit for that.
So when another first grader confided in me that Santa was really your parents, he met a mind already prepared.
Mom, too, was prepared. When I asked her about the Santa myth at bedtime, she was ready to up the ante with "Santa
is really the Spirit of Christmas." That is Scrooge's discovery, isn't it - that the spirit of generosity and fellowship
with all that warms mid-winter's need is what makes Chrismas a Holy Day.
But Dickens' story of Scrooge's conversion, A Christmas Carol (1843), though it gives passing mention to a poor
child born in a stable, doesn't mention Santa Claus. That made-in-America conflation of Saint Nicholas
and Father Christmas, you will recall, comes from Thomas Nast's illustrations in Harpers, beginning in 1862 &
continuing for nearly a quarter of a century, of Clement Moore's famous "Visit from Saint Nicholas," which first
appeared in 1823.
The grown child's question to his parents regarding the Santa Scam is the real question: "Why did you lie to me?"
Mom had doubtless read that famous chestnut, the much-reprinted 1897 NY Sun editorial that attempts to deal with a little
girl whose school chums told her there was no Santa Clause - "Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Clause"
"Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe
except they see...
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know
that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa
Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance
to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood
fills the world would be extinguished.
"Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies...."
And so we have the Santa Scam transcendant & triumphant, now become the Spirit of Christmas, ascending
into heaven accompanied by faries. Why did you lie to me?
"The skepticism of a skeptical age." Scrooge is soured on Christmas because he has swallowed a bitter pill.
Add up the days and times of the Old Testament and they total about 2000 years. Charles Lyell's studies in geology,
beginning in 1837, showed an earth millions of years in the making. Darwin's Origin of the Species arrived in 1859. The
skeptical age had arrived at street-level by 1935. Sportin Life, in Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess"
sings it loud and clear: "The things that you're lible to read in the Bible - they ain't necessarily so."
Dickens and his fellows were looking for a viable substitute for religious faith. Perhaps literature
would do the job. Perhaps love & will. "Ah love," says the newly-wedded Mathew Arnold to his bride, circa
1850, "let us be true to one another! for the world [emptied of faith] hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain." "How dreary the world would be if there were no Santa Claus."
Why did you lie to me?
To prepare you for tomorrow's battle.
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Rebecca Thompson, Christmas Collection
Helen, how is your son doing now? Thank you for telling us your... and his story. I hope your Christmas
is truly blessed this year.
I have a few Christmas adventures, not as traumatic as what the Cariotis family experienced, but
nevertheless memorable.
...
Santa Claus and Truth.
Sometime during kindergarten, perhaps in the fall, I was told the truth about Santa. It was
a hard reality for me to accept that some man who goes 'round at night giving away toys... for FREE... was not real.
But I took it as a right of passage into adulthood and the following day went from neighbor to neighbor telling
the adults that I now knew the truth about Santa Claus. It was a sad day.
Christmas Eve came. We traditionally went to Christmas Eve services, then dinner with the Thompson side
of the family, opened presents, drove around town to look at Christmas lights (supposedly to calm us all down for an
early sleep) then home to warm beds to try-to-go-to-sleep-for-free-presents-from-Santa-Claus-the-next-morning.
That Christmas, we had gone to church and as we were preparing to have dinner with all of the relatives,
the doorbell rang... In walked Santa... the real one.
Folks, Santa Claus exists.
...
A Cold Night.
About ten or eleven years ago... the year that Dallas had a very cold Christmas Eve... in the tens
or less, as I recall. I returned from Midnight Mass. Without previous warning, the heat pump had gone out in my
apartment sometime during the evening. It was blowing air. It was not warm air. My apartment was the same temperature
as it was outside. I was not about to call some service man on Christmas Eve at one thirty in the morning to come and
service the thing, which would probably have to be replaced anyway. For some reason, I decided to tough this out.
I scrambled for the ski-wear: silk long johns and thick socks. I do not usually care for
dogs sleeping in bed, but this night, as I eyed my dog, she was the only warm thing in that apartment. And, as I huddled
close to this dog's warmth, I could not help but think of the mother of our Lord on that donkey during the desert cold...
probably the only warmth that she had.
I must admit, though, I was also grateful not to be nine months pregnant...about to give birth...
even if it was for the sake of the world to give birth to Jesus, the Messiah.
...
This year.
Christmas day falls on the Saturday that our church is committed to preparing a meal for homeless folks.
I will say, several years ago, I heard that the holiday meals (Thanksgiving and Christmas) served to the homeless are
a bit of a joke among these folks who are living on the streets. They are not stupid people, and they know pretty well
that much of the attention given to them by politicians or the press are counted as kudos, or feel good moments for those
who are remembering "the poor" ... by, uh, "being truly grateful for what they have been given", or "by passing
on the Christmas spirit to the less fortunate." The word with some of them on the streets then goes: "then the
rest of the year, they don't give a damn about us."
This year... as he has been doing for the past 16 or 17 years, on the 4th Saturday of every month, Paul
Ledwitz, joined by a crew of helpers and sandwich-makers, will be cooking a hot meal in the kitchen of our parish
for homeless people. Paul is a marathoner. He doesn't complain... much. He has few delusions about the variety of what
brings folks to the streets. He's not running for office. He has a job. He has a family, wife, children and grandchildren,
as well as a nice home. He has a more or less comfortable lifestyle. He seems to be grateful for what he has. But
most of all, Paul Ledwitz simply gives a damn (whether he feels like it or not) by making this meal... All year
round... Every month. And on December 25th, Christmas Day, Paul Ledwitz will, again, be in the kitchen at St. Francis
Episcopal Church making a hot meal for about 350-450 homeless folks... delivering it to them downtown... just as he has
always done.
So. To COFFEE readers, for Christmas and the rest of the year wishes:
Seek and Speak Truth.
Stay warm.
Give a damn.
And.
Most of all, have blessed Holy Day.
Rebecca Thompson
...
Helen Cariotis, The Rest of the Story
Rebecca, thanks for those sweet Christmas stories.
And thanks for asking about my son. Nicholas was 18 and just out of high school when the accident
happened. He had been accepted to TCU and was excited about that. Although he had to re-learn to read and write
in English (interestingly enough, his Spanish was not affected), and lost much of his higher math forever, he came back far
enough to go to TCU and graduated in 5 years. They have a great staff over there that helps students with disabilities.
We joked a lot about him being in the "remedial" classes with the football players! Today he lives on his own and has
a job at the VA Hospital. I still think brain injury is the worst!
This Christmas is one we will remember, as well. With my youngest son fighting in Iraq, I hardly
have the energy or the desire to "do Christmas." The tree is still in the water bucket in the back yard, and there aren't
any decorations out or presents bought. I do understand that this holiday is not about me, but the birth of Christ!
It is his day that we celebrate, so I will get it together somehow.
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Mike Lorfing, Christmas Memories
My father was the pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Hondo Texas in the 40s and 50s. It was
a tough time in a drouth-ridden poor part of Texas. The church would stage a pageant on Christmas eve , with boys in
bathrobes and girls in choir robes taking the roles of the nativity. I remember that my older brother taught me
to say my one line in the show backwards as well as forwards. My mother was worried that I would say it that way
at the performance. I never saw one of the pageants as I always was in them, so I guess they were up to the standards
of Church dramas.
About a week before Christmas, my dad would take us to
the market in San Antonio and buy whole cases of apples, oranges, nuts, candy bars and other goodies. The Luther
League would fill little kraft paper sacks with one orange, an apple, a few brazil nuts and pecans, some hard ribbon
candy and most importantly a Snickers bar. They were put under a big tree that was never bought, but cut at a nearby
ranch. Hondo is in the brush country so the tree was always a juniper ( or cedar as we called it).
The church was sort of hot and the aroma of the tree,
the bags, the fruit and the candy permeated the atmosphere with an intoxicating fragrance. I can still call up that
smell from my olfactory memory. I had access to the church since we lived next door in the parsonage and it took
all the will power I had to keep from sampling the treats.
After the Christmas eve pageant the children were called
to the front of the church and each given a bag. We truly appreciated it. I wonder how my kids would have reacted
given a bag of fruit for Christmas. After the service we would go to the parsonage and open the family presents. They
were not much but we loved them.
They say that the sense of smell is the last one to go. I know when it is my time to appear in that great pageant
in the sky, and my senses fade, the last one will be of that that wonderful aroma of a Christmas long ago.
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