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What Santa Claus taught me
One youth’s quest to get the right answers
Story by Ken May
Santa Claus taught me plentiful lessons. But as a seven-year-old child, I never thought of Santa Claus as a teacher. He was just somebody who handed out gifts, like the people passing our coupon flyers at shopping malls. He had a long white beard to match his red and white jumpsuits. For me, Santa was a fat super hero that could fly, but my older cousin teased that he was a hippie in need of a shave.
At age seven, I was a little confused about Santa, but as long as I believed in him the presents kept coming, and that was good enough for me. But at elementary school there were rumors. We heard garbled tales that Santa didn’t exist; I think they were started by a German kid named Nietzsche who lived down the block.
The Hungarian children warned that Santa could beat us, and Dutch kids said that he owned slaves.
There was a wild tale in circulation about Santa’s secret den of unpaid elf workers. They said that Santa forced them to work double time, while isolated up north in a winter wonderland of snow. There was also a story about a reindeer that could fly 24-hours per day without drinking coffee. Rudolph the Reindeer could redirect jet planes with a red nose that could blink like a traffic light.
There was a part of me that couldn’t believe all this. Even at age seven it seemed too far-fetched. So I set out in search of some answers.
I wasn’t sure I could trust the kid Nietzsche, who held his finger paint brushes like cigarettes, but he seemed to be intelligent in science class. He told me I shouldn’t always accept what the adults say, but I disbelieved him. I wasn’t a conspiracy theorist. Besides Santa must be real because the adults said so. Why would parents and authorities lie to us children? After all, this was suburban America in 1970.
The Santa issue imposed a dilemma: one side had to be wrong, so how could I find out who was right? To solve this riddle, on the twelfth day of Christmas, I resolved to gather all the toys that Santa gave me together. I was looking for clues.
And this simple act set me on the path toward finding out what Santa taught me.
//subhead1//Made in Japan
My toys had all been manufactured someplace. The stamp on most of them read “Made in Japan.” Two Japanese twins lived down the street, so I peddled my tricycle down the block in a thin layer of snow. It was the tenth day of Christmas. They were playing in the sandbox and made me take off my cowboy boots.
As they planted flowers onto frozen sandcastles, I sprung out my toy. It was a plastic soldier that I had melted on a light bulb. I asked them if it was theirs. They had never seen my toy before; nor was Santa a close relative of theirs either. Now I was really confused.
If Santa wasn’t Japanese, then it must prove that elves were the actual laborers. I felt sorry for them, but I didn’t want to push my luck with Santa by having such ideas. It was problem enough deciding where Santa actually lived.
Friends informed me Santa was from the North. That made him Canadian. But others said he floated from above. That made him God. The difference between Canadians and God wasn’t clear; at age seven my sense of geography was a little off.
Both Santa and God were old men who had psychic powers. They knew if you were being naughty or nice at any time. But God punished you by sending you to Hell, while Santa just put coal in your stockings. I kind of liked Santa better for this. He was more lenient. And truthfully, I didn’t even know what coal was. I was raised with electricity.
//subhead2//The science of Santa
On the seventh day of Christmas, I resumed my quest and saw Nietzsche once again. He was busy killing a grasshopper when I arrived. He told me that suffering was the nature of the human condition, which sounded very odd coming from the mouth of a 7-year-old kid. I just thought there was something strange about Germans.
I asked him: “How can I prove whether Santa is Japanese or Canadian?” He told me to check his passport. I requested Santa’s real age. He told me the same answer would suffice. This lead to the next question: “How can I know when a Santa Claus is real?” Every shopping mall had a visiting Santa; not all of them could be the correct one.
I showed Nietzsche my melted plastic soldier. He said this was faulty evidence that could not prove his existence. What I really needed was not a toy but a tool. To solve my erudite riddle, Nietzsche suggested that I should find a “hypothesis” and test it. I didn’t even know what that word meant, but it sounded important because it has four syllables.
At the age of seven I was unemployed. I couldn’t afford a hypothesis, but I was sure that they made them in Japan.
//subhead3//Finding a theory
On the fifth day of Christmas, I went to a shopping mall, where my parent’s placed me in a long line to sit on Santa’s lap. They said they would spend the next two hours buying grandma’s underwear and socks, so I wouldn’t follow them.
The basic arrangement is that you tell Santa about the toys you want, and then he gives you a candy cane. Fair enough, but this year I wanted a hypothesis. Hardly anyone else had one in my neighborhood.
When I made my request, Santa just gave me a defeated look like he just climbed out of the Mekong River with one shoe still stuck in the mud.
“What? A hypothesis? You could singe your eyebrows off with one of those, ho-ho-ho,” Santa said, laughing at his own joke.
“I am not going to hurt anyone with it,” I pleaded, “I just want to know the truth.”
Somehow it was already established that all shopping mall Santas were fake. They were “helpers” who placed our orders for toys, so that the real Santa knew what inventory to stock up on. Besides, we saw this Santa go home after shift on the public bus.
“The truth about what?” he reluctantly prodded.
“I want to learn the truth about Santa” I boldly confessed.
“The truth is Santa has different meanings for different people, eh,” He philosophically lamented. Which seemed like a little too broad of a definition at the time, so I asked him to explain further. After all, this was my quest for knowledge.
He responded, “Look kid, if you want a hypothesis that will reveal the truth about Santa, try this one out,” as he leaned closer with toxic breath that would be mistaken for cologne in my neighborhood, “ask your parents to set out a plate of cookies and some milk on Christmas Eve. If you wake up in the morning and they have been drunk or eaten, then that proves Santa exists.”
“But what if Santa avoids them like broccoli?” I inquired.
“If Santa doesn’t drink the milk and eat the cookies, than it proves he lost his hunger from already eating too many cookies earlier that afternoon.”
//subhead4//Testing that theory
With this secret tip in mind, a special gift given straight from an insider of Santa’s corporate enterprise, I raced home with my shiny new hypothesis. I was so excited that I forgot to ask to see his passport. I couldn’t wait to try his scientific theory out.
I pleaded with my parents to give me milk and cookies to bait Santa with. When they learned my ulterior motives they were glad to help out. They beckoned me to clean up the kitchen as well to really get on Santa’s good side.
I spent ages in the kitchen, hand selecting sweets as if I was plucking oranges and plums from trees of paradise. Every cookie was flawless and unbroken. I then staggered to the living room, plate and glass wobbling in my tiny hands. I wanted to set them on the television set; a special place where Santa was bound to look.
However, on route to my destination, I stepped on my melted plastic soldier. It caused me to trip, and I dropped my precious merchandise.
The plate fell to the floor smashing, and my little brother got hit in the eye with a ricocheted raison.
My parents sent me to bed, where I suffered the mental anguish of waiting and listening for Santa’s arrival. Every sound harkened me awake once again.
Eventually, I fell asleep. But while I slept, Santa had placed gifts under our uprooted conifer tree. I saw these presents in the morning along with the blinking lights and glittering tinsel of the tree. As I sat alone in the first hue of sunrise, I enjoyed the sheer pleasure of waiting for my other family members to wake up and open our gifts together. The meaning of Christmas was seeing them arrive one-by-one.
And for the time being, the truth about Santa no longer mattered. It was never really clear anyway whether Santa had drunk the milk of if I had merely spilt it.
//subhead5//The lesson
The moral to the story is this:
Although a scientific theory isn’t a dangerous thing, you shouldn’t go around pointing a loaded hypothesis at anyone.
So, Virginia, do you want to know the truth about Santa Claus? Well, place out a plate of warm cookies and milk on the next Christmas Eve. If the plate is still full the next morning, it must have been your next door neighbor’s fruitcake. If the goodies are gone this proves that he exists.
Originally Posted by Umbuku
...cheers cousin...it is a pagan festival turned into a commercial wank...Christmas Day family gatherings can cause no end of financial and other angst...BTW Merry Christmas
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