Santa?

Gregg Doyel is one of Santa's elves? <crossthread>

 

I can't remember exactly when I stopped believing, but I know I didn't tell my parents for a year or two. However, I do remember things that made me start to question his existence, along with my parents' crazy attempts at swaying me back into being a full believer.

Dad's Attempt
I grew up in an old farmhouse. We didn't have any central hear or air, nor did we have a fireplace, but we did have a wood-burning stove.
Looked like this.


Well, we all know that Santa comes down the chimney and out of the fireplace, right? So how did he get into my house? When I was around seven, I posed the question to my dad. This is wfw, as closely as I can remember. (Just imagine my incredibly country accent I had as a child.)

Me: Daddy, Santa is supposed to come into the house through the fireplace, but we have a wood stove, so how does he get inside?

Dad: Well, after Santa lands on the roof, he comes over and takes the cover off the vent pipe. Then he stretches out so he's long and skinny to squeeze down the vent pipe (wood stoves don't have regular chimneys).

Me: But won't he get stuck when the pipe turns? (There was a 90 degree angle where it went into the wall.)

Dad: Well, no, because he can just wiggle through the turn.

Me: But how does he get out of the stove? It locks from the outside. (This is where I'm just sure there's no way he can know the answer.)

Dad: Well, after he wiggles through the pipe and into the stove, he looses his long and skinny shape and squishes down to fit. Then he oooooozes out through the front grate and onto the floor, where he returns to his normal shape. Then he eats his cookies, puts all the presents under the tree, fills the stockings and goes back through the stove and pipe the same way he came in.

Me: (Too dumbfounded to say a word.)

I suppose that helped to buy them a couple more years of belief. But then there was the stocking incident...

Mom's Attempt
I think I was eight years old, starting to believe even less in Santa, but I wanted to hold on to it so much. Christmas morning, my sister and I went downstairs and did the usual giddy screaming, because we saw that Santa had been there. We went through the usual tearing apart of wrapping paper and loved all of our gifts. After we were done opening them, something wasn't right.

I was excited about the gifts I had, but I felt a slight wave of disappointment, somewhat like when Ralphie didn't find a Red Ryder BB gun under the tree. I kept looking around, but I had no luck. Santa had forgotten to fill our stockings. I tried to hide my disappointment, but my mom saw through me. Starting with the realization from the look on my face, here's how it went down.

Mom: What's wrong, honey?

Me: (In a hum ho quiet voice)...nothing.

Mom: But you look sad.

Me: Well....(long pause), Santa didn't leave us any candy in our stockings like he usually does. (I tried to recover, because I really didn't want to sound ungrateful.) But that's ok, because we did get lots of neat stuff. (The recovery attempt was terrible, because the loss of this little symbol from Santa had me near the brink of tears. I would have been less disappointed if I came downstairs to nothing but a filled stocking.)

Mom: (Obviously struggling for words) What? He didn't fill your stockings? Well.....(still stammering while looking for a plausible reason) OH, THAT'S RIGHT! I forgot, but he was running behind and asked me to put the stuff in the stockings. He said he'd leave it on the kitchen counter for me. I just fell asleep before he left it and forgot to do it this morning when I got up. Silly me.

And that was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back. That, I believe, was what pushed me over the edge into coming to terms that Santa, for me, would no longer exist. I think I lied for another year or so, not wanting to give away that final pinch of magic. It still wasn't as special, but after I finally told my parents about not believing, it felt like the last bit of the commercialized version of Christmas was gone forever.

My poor nephew has never believed. My sister said she didn't want to lie to him, so she never did the Santa thing with him. He's 10 now, but when he was about eight, he was at my house for Christmas. I was trying to tease him and push the Santa thing a little, but he wouldn't budge. We went to the Christmas Eve candlelight service at my church, where every year, the preacher tells the story of the life and death of the real Saint Nicholas.

My nephew is just as much, if not more, ADD as me, so I spent the time worried about what he was going to do with the lit candle in his hand. He was actually really good with it, held it perfectly still most of the time.

So later, after we got back to my house, I was teasing him that if he didn't believe, Santa wouldn't leave him any surprise gifts, and he'd only get the gifts from us that were already under the tree (I had a couple of surprise gifts stashed in my room for him).

What he said next still makes me giggle today. "Well it doesn't matter if I believe, because he's dead anyway. The preacher said so!"

I got so tickled at that. I had no idea he'd paid such close attention, and it made me wonder if that sermon had ever made believers question the existence of the figure they know as Santa.

I don't have any children yet, but I will totally play out the magic of Santa for as long as I possibly can.

 

Ceiling Cat and Santa Cat are pretty tight.





Edit: Where did Santa Cat go?

 

My nephew is 19 months old and my brother asked me if I would be willing to put on the Santa suit that my uncle used to wear. My uncle is a lot bigger than me, which is saying something, but for my nephew who I adore, I will gladly make an ass of myself.

 

My husband wore a Santa suit for my mom's church several years ago. He's not big enough to fill it out, but I guess it was just the principal of having a visit from Santa. Anyway, after all the kids went up, the preacher called me up there to sit on Santa's lap. Talk about a weird situation...if only they knew what Santa had whispered into my ear.

 

I have no clue how to respond to that, I can...ah, fuck it!

 

KG thank you for the story. That's what I was going for.
I remember when I was about six and it rained on Christmas. I asked my father, "Daddy, how can Santa fly in the rain?"
Without missing or beat or blinking an eye, my father said "He has a helicopter son. That's how he's able to get around."
I laugh now but I believed what my father told me for several years after that.
Damn, I miss my dad.

 

"That preacher's kinda hot."

 

Unfortunately, the green tights.

 

Santa shrugged