MY LIFETIME BATTLE WITH SANTA CLAUS

      I have struggled my entire life attempting to embrace and love Santa.    However, ever since I can remember he has seemed arrogant, pompous and intrusive.  “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake”?…”He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for

 goodness sake”???   Santa struck me as scary as clowns…(I do not trust clowns, the Lone Ranger or anyone who hides their face.)

     Even as a little kid, the definition of “good” seemed arbitrary and does this scary pervert see us sleeping and probably in stages of nakedness, as we prepare for bed?  How does one define “good”?   If one is not “good”, he receives no gifts?  By whose interpretation is one good?  I was always told we received gifts from Santa and gifts from our parents, often wrapped in the same paper.  I felt if the “poor” kids in town we were collecting for in class needed help, Santa could provide it…he never did.  It was up to us to kick in food and toys for the under-privileged.  Santa only seemed to have time for the children whose families were already well off.  Does that mean these poorer kids were “bad”?   That hardly seemed possible.

     Sixty years ago, we had a little girl in my second grade class who often wore the same boiled cabbage smelling dress to school.  She was very shy, embarrassed and our teacher sent us home with notes asking for clothing and food for her family for Christmas.  The little girl knew this was going on and it compounded her embarrassment.  I felt awful for her and asked why Santa didn’t take care of this family, instead of depending on her classmates?  I was never given a satisfactory answer and began to smell a rat.  How was I expected to fawn and bow before Santa, when he wouldn’t help this and other poor families?  

     My soliloquies protesting this injustice before my teacher and parents were met with stoney silence.   My father finally grew exasperated with me and said Santa would “kill me in my sleep” if I continued to question his “modus operandi”, which had been established for centuries.  I suspected he was lying.   I never heard of Santa killing anyone, but it did cause me to tone down my protests, as I sought a rational answer.

     My problem with Santa was compounded that Christmas of 1957, when my mother took my brothers and me to see him at Montgomery Ward in downtown Sherman.  My mother loved Montgomery Ward and did all of her serious shopping there.  She was on multiple lay away programs, religiously sought sales and scoured their catalogue for deals.    

     She left me in line to see Santa with my brothers and told us to wait after our visit until she returned.  Right out of Ralphie and “A Christmas Story”, we waited in a long line for our turn.  As we waited, my little brother Bob said he needed to use the rest room.  I looked and saw the men’s room about 20 feet away.  I pointed it out to my 4-year-old brother and told him brother Bill and I would stay in line and keep our place.  He agreed and melted into the crowd.

      A few moments later, Santa (who was setting on an elevated throne) burst into laughter and said, “Oh my goodness, someone stop that kid.”  I looked up to see Bob, with his jeans around his ankles, peeing a high arch into a toilet on display between me and the men’s room.  I ran over, got him stopped and to the men’s room, with 2-year-old brother Bill in tow, as Santa was bellowing with laughter, along with many holiday shoppers.  As I got Bob tidied up I was thinking up every curse I could mentally hurl at Santa  (without really thinking specific words, that would come later).           

     What kind of pompous, fat elf laughs at a kid who doesn’t know any better?  The same one that doesn’t provide for children and families truly in need!  And so, my downward opinion of the jolly, old elf began to spiral out of control. 

     Once I figured out Santa was just a story to allegedly enhance Christmas, I took a kinder view.    I was happy to jump on the band wagon, as long as we all understood it was going to be up to us to help others at Christmas time.

     For the first few years of my shopping center career, I was responsible for bringing Santa into the mall and then supervised about 7-8 marketing directors at their assigned centers, all bringing in and dealing with Santa for the buying season.     This was a true test of our mettle.

     We had a Santa who snaked a straw up under his beard and into a bottle of cherry slo gin, as he got drunk while asking kids what they wanted for Christmas.  He went to work stone sober, never left his throne and an hour later he is bombed.  It took a while to figure that one out…his beard slowly turning red at the corner of his mouth was a clue, along with his stinky cherry breath and red teeth.

     One associate found Santa, in full costume making love to a member of the line staff from Luby’s Cafeteria on his throne, after hours.  Her white Luby’s skirt was hiked up and she still donned her hair net and white apron, with gravy stains on the front.  Something about them having sex on Santa's throne, still in uniform, diminished the desire to sit on Santa’s knee or to dine in Luby’s.

     My most memorable Santa/mall memory was at a little mall we had in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  They had a small, electric, red bus with graphics to make it look like a space ship…it was called “Santa’s Rocket”.  For 25 cents, kids and parents could be driven thru the mall by Santa.  Not very exciting.   I drove up to the mall in my rental car and saw the marquee boldly read… 

“SIT ON SANTA’S LAP - RIDE ON HIS ROCKET!”   

     Oh no…NO.  NO.   NO!     THE HORROR!    I banged my head against the steering wheel, as once again Santa complicated and confounded my Christmas.  To this day he and I maintain a cautious, wary relationship.  I DO NOT TRUST HIM and remain very careful when I am around him or attempt to explain him to my grandchildren.