When Peter Johnson scrawled on the chalkboard: “There is no such thing as Santa Claus,” the whole second-grade class gasped, and then fell silent.
Fortunately, our teacher, Mrs. Lawrence, returned to the classroom just then and vigorously erased the nefarious message. Her round face was red with fury. She announced the statement was not true, not true at all. Peter was sent out into the hall to mull over his awful indiscretion. Not another word was spoken of the incident. Peter was prone to daydreaming and was considered a little odd by most of us anyhow.
Mrs. Carol Lawrence forever remained a favorite teacher because of that act. There really was nothing else special about her, other than the fact that her husband was in the vacuum cleaner business and provided our classroom with an electric eraser cleaner thus sparing us the drudgery of cleaning the erasers with water. She was a large woman-fat, really-and wore monochromatic dresses with short sleeves, a Peter Pan collar, and her initial “C” embroidered on the breast. She was prone to sweating, and by lunchtime sported a half-moon of perspiration under each arm. She had very short, permed hair, thinning so that her scalp was visible through the iron-colored curls. But her belief in Santa Claus made her faultless.
Anyhow, I knew there was a Santa Claus. I’d witnessed an errant elf the year before, one that came early and played in my bedroom. I have a vivid memory of him. He wore a red, pointy hat, green and white striped shirt, and red pants with matching red suspenders. His ears were large and pointed, sticking out from the side of his grinning face. He teased me by playing hide-and-seek behind a small white table under the window. There was no question that the little guy was there, albeit for no more than one excitable moment. I saw an elf and that meant Santa was on his way.
We didn’t have a fireplace for Santa to descend but nevertheless, Santa just appeared. Every year, he filled our hand-knit stockings and left toys under the tree. How else did I get my Cindy doll, and her assortment of furniture, including a jumper seat and high chair? Peter Johnson was very wrong. Santa was very real. I had seen his elf, and Cindy was proof.
Each child’s relationship with Santa Claus is connected to his or her parents’ sense of tradition. And each child believes this tradition, this relationship, is the correct one. To this day, I am quite certain that my relationship with the old elf was the correct one, and I, in turn, pass that proprietary relationship on to my children.
It begins with knowing who Santa is. This is a huge source of confusion for even the most observant. Santas ring bells outside department stores. Santas ho-ho-ho their greetings to youngsters who sit on their laps with their lists to be ordered from the workshop. Santas take off their jackets and greet children from their “workshops” as if they are merely taking a break from toy-making. Believe me, they are Santa’s helpers. All but one, of course. Santa is magic, that’s a given, but he really can’t be at all those malls at once. Santa’s helpers are an important and integral part of the holiday season, and I for one have always been thankful they do their work so diligently, and if a kid wants to believe he’s for real, then more power to him. It is the great secret of Christmas to know where the real Santa is stationed, and for the life of me, I don’t know how I was so lucky to know, but know, I did.
It is a kind of blasphemy to admit this, but when I was a kid in the early ’60s, the real Santa was at the downtown Minneapolis Powers Department store. It’s true. Most people around here believed the real guy was at Dayton’s, where they waited in an interminable line to see him and have a picture taken with him. My mother took my older sisters to visit Santa, and they claimed to find him at Dayton’s. However, by the early ’60s, he had left Dayton’s, according to my sister Patty who had taken over the job of delivering me to his lap and relocated across the street to Powers.
Santa even brought Mrs. Claus, who I was told, shared my first name. Santa and Mrs. Claus were round and jolly, red-cheeked, and sparkly-eyed, matching perfectly the illustrations in Clement Moore’s, T’was The Night Before Christmas. They had an elaborate workshop set up and even served homemade candy canes and Orange Crush.
There was nothing that could possibly indicate that Mr. and Mrs. Claus at Powers were not real; not even the large, cardboard box of presents holding the ice skates and mittens for which I’d asked Santa, the one I found one morning in the hallway on its way to the closet. And of course, not even blackboard protests from sour Peter Johnson.
I lost track of Santa after I grew too big to sit on his lap and after Powers closed. My children and I were lucky enough to find him again years later at Nordstrom’s. Merry old Mrs. Claus and the refreshments no longer came with him, but he did bring along his favorite elf to help out with the photos. I noticed Santa had lost some weight and his complexion was less rosy, in fact, it was somewhat olive. But when we first met up with him, he claimed to remember me, which really impressed my children. Without question then, he was the real deal. He became the Santa we sought out year after year. Why visit with a helper when you can talk directly to the real Santa? Other children spent time in long lines to visit other “Santas,” but while I couldn’t explain to my children how it once again became my good fortune to meet up with the real guy again, we just accepted our good luck and enjoyed our annual visits.
One year, we put off our visit until the day before Christmas Eve. That proved to be a bad decision since a messy snowstorm struck. We were stuck at home, cursing the elements that got in the way of our annual pilgrimage. Luckily though, Santa had become techno-savvy and had an email address. From home, the kids could send regards, along with the wish list of toys. And the best part was that Santa himself responded! He commented on the weather up at the North Pole, about how Rudolph was doing, as well as the apparently uneven temperaments of Comet and Dancer. A virtual audience with Santa kept him very real.
Of course, the actual down-the-chimney, sack-in-hand visits to the house in the middle of the night are the highlight of knowing Santa. And it turns out Santa doesn’t always wait until the middle of the night. My son found that out the Christmas he was 5. Returning home from the Christmas Eve festivities, he dashed downstairs to the playroom to retrieve a toy. He didn’t bother with the Power Ranger. Instead, he flew back upstairs, his heart pounding so hard the undulations were visible through his shirt. He breathlessly announced that Santa was down there, right then and there, putting up a big play castle.
While he had to admit he didn’t really see Santa, he knew he was there because of the castle. Knowing that children should be asleep so Santa can do his work, the now-bewitched child raced to his bed and squeezed his eyes closed, willing himself to sleep. I was relieved because I was almost certain Santa had been busted.
The experience stayed with my son as he grew older. Several years later, his own Peter Johnson, a serious boy named Steven, tried to put the kibosh on Santa. My son didn’t utter a word of dissent. He merely felt sympathy that his best friend was without proof that Santa was real. “I have proof,” he told me, “Steven doesn’t.”
Presents under the tree, a stocking filled with candy canes and trinkets, a half-eaten cookie, and partially sipped root beer isn’t enough evidence of Santa’s existence for some children. A year after the email incident, my daughter, the pragmatic soul that she is, left Santa a note in which she asked him point-blank if he was real. (A grim-faced girl in her class had told her otherwise…my daughter had remained mum, unwilling to come clean.)
In the morning, the presents were hardly noticed. Instead, the thrill was over Santa’s response. It was written in red ink, on the paper on which she had written her note. His note was in a language that appeared foreign, written in letters that looked familiar, yet strange. Holding it up to a mirror, she was able to decipher his note in which he showed he knew a thing or two about her. Not only did Santa exist; there was truth to the song about him knowing when you’re good or bad, or when you’re awake or sleeping. Too bad the girl in her class didn’t write Santa a note. She’d have been in the know then, too.
I’m kind of missing my encounters with Santa these days now that my children are older and too sophisticated to listen for the sound of hooves landing on the roof top, or the jingle of bells as Santa unloads his hefty sack under our Christmas tree. But he still comes; how else can I explain the booty and joy his visits leave us?
Holly Birkeland, a freelance writer with three children, lives in Minnetonka.
