Happy Hollerdays
Before the swearing started.
I found out the truth about Santa Claus when I was 5 years old the way I do most things: the hard way.
I was in Sunday school on Christmas Eve at the charismatic non-denominational church we were attending at the time. I loved this church. People wore jeans and spoke in tongues and played a lot of acoustic guitar. I desperately wanted to speak in tongues and always hoped the “spirit” would choose me, but it never did. My friend Jason spoke in tongues and I had the tiniest doubt about whether he was faking it or not, but I was mostly just jealous. He is a pastor today and I am an agnostic, so I guess it all worked out.
On this particular evening, we were discussing Christmas and the birth of Christ and I was in my usual spot on the front row. When the Sunday school teacher asked us how many of us still believed in Santa Clause, I shot my hand up in the air with the gusto of a person who knows their conviction is valid.
I knew Santa Claus was real for several reasons. First, my dad said he was. Second, once, when I was about three, Santa had left sooty boot prints on our white carpet from our fireplace to our Christmas tree, much to my mother’s chagrin. For some reason, her anger made my father die with laughter.
Third, my grandmother had also told me he was real. She would spend every Christmas Eve with us, and always slept in the bed with me. I was so excited I could hardly sleep and she egged this on by teaching me songs like “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” and “Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah” that she would sing to keep me awake. She would occasionally stop, look at me with wonder and ask, “Did you hear that? I just heard sleigh bells!” I would hop up and down in bed and beg her to let me go outside to see, but she said that Santa wouldn’t like that, and we needed to leave him to his work. Jesus Christ, I loved that woman.
Back in that front row Sunday School seat, my hand held high, it took me a minute to realize that the room had gotten very quiet and a few people were snickering. I looked around and saw no one else had their hand up. My teacher then informed me that Santa Clause was a tool used by the Devil to take attention away from Jesus and his birthday and he wasn’t real at all. Son of a bitch. I was ashamed and humiliated. How could I be the only one who didn’t know? How could I be so stupid?
While I don’t remember how I reacted outwardly, I distinctly remember my father’s “God damn it!” in the car when I told him what I had learned. He told me something about how Santa was the spirit of Christmas and it was OK to believe in him and it didn’t mean I was going to hell. I was doubtful.
It was my grandmother who saved the day, in the end. That night we lay in bed together and she told me that of course Santa was real and some people just can’t see him because they don’t believe in magic. She had me convinced well before midnight.
Every Christmas Eve, I think about those two women. One who thought it was OK to carelessly obliterate a small child’s sense of wonder on what should be one of the most wonderful nights ohf the year, and the other who sacrificed a night of good sleep once a year to fill that same child with as much magic and love as she could muster. That magic and love is the spirit of Christmas I try to hold on to every year, Santa or no Santa.
There is a longer version of this story available for Patreon subscibers. If you’d like to enjoy early access and bonus content and support my writing, please consider joining.
