Everything is Made Up, Except for Santa
Tonight, as Jim and I passed each other in the hallway, I said, “I love Christmastime.” He pulled me to him so our faces were close, and he asked, “Oh yea, why?” I replied, “I don’t know, it’s just so magical!” He kissed me and smiled, and as he headed downstairs to heat up lasagna leftovers, I hollered after him, “That’s why it’s great we are a home that believes in Santa Claus!” He hollered back, “We are a home of 50% believers.” And I retorted, “Hey, as long as you’re not a Santa denier, you get a pass cuz I can believe enough for the both of us.”
It may seem strange that someone who doesn’t believe in God will believe in Santa, but as my friend Regis taught me long ago, “You don’t always have to explain yourself.”
I’m a Christmas kid. I grew up with Christmas traditions and beliefs. Santa preferred Scotch over cookies, and the reindeer loved carrots (tops NOT cut off). Mrs Claus left me new pajamas at the end of my bed every Christmas morning, so that I wasn’t opening gifts in old pjs. This happened both when we lived in a grand upper-middle-class house with my 2nd stepdad as well as when we lived in a small apartment the year my mom told me that Santa had to give all my gifts to the poor kids.
I could go on and on about Santa and his existence, but that would be hypocritical since I feel incredibly uncomfortable about any evangelizing.
So I will say, enjoy the fun piece below, which is my submission to this month’s
Symposium with the theme of “Fiction.”By the time you are old, no one believes you were ever young. And trying to convince them of such, even with photographic evidence, is a trial at best because the structures of our faces change with age. So sure, you can share your photo albums full of pages of dark hair, plump cheeks, short foreheads, and closely tucked ears. But as we age, our jawlines withdraw, our foreheads enlarge as our hairlines retreat, our eye sockets sink, our ears grow long with increasing cartilage, and our facial fat is unevenly distributed so that we all become jowly. Of course no one can see us as we were; it is unbelievable.
Once jolly, now jowly.
Once abundant, now bony.
But he’d been old forever - rarely remembered as young - yet his heart was newborn even if his skin sagged with inelasticity. A jolly right ol’ elf.
“Jesus and JFK had it right,” he’d mumble with a shake of his head every time he made an intentional pass of the mirror, “they died young, so no one ever saw them old.”
His wife, Beverley, heard his mutterance and replied with a holler, “Oh Nick, stop! You’re awful.” Then she smirked, laughing on the cusp of her own warped joke, “Plus, you shouldn’t make jokes about Kennedy.”
“Ah beware, woman; otherwise, I will call ol’ Yeshua. And His is a naughty list you do NOT want to be on!” They both laughed in unison, a corresponding call of pleasure, the way only couples who have been together eons can do.
She snapped his ample backside with a flour-sack tea towel that Yeshua had embroidered for her the holiday before. Bev was His favorite, and it never bothered Nick one bit. “Hey, I don’t mind the attention He pays you. Women are so powerful that it only takes one good woman to be behind two great men. But can you imagine how many good men would need to be behind a great woman?” A twinkle sparked in his eye.
“Like any man would stay behind!” She clacked back as she rolled her eyes and chapped his ass with another laser-focused snap of the towel.
It was getting closer to the big day, and they’d managed so many Christmases by now that while it was busy and bright, it was simultaneously calm and controlled at the North Pole. The reindeer were fit, the gifts were built and bundled, and the sleigh was in the hands of the best mechanic, so Nick gave everyone the rare Thursday night off. Beverley dressed up their favorite frozen pizza with kalamata olives and feta, and placed it in the middle of the table along with a stack of brittle photos.
“A salve for your ol’ elderly moods.” Beverly didn’t explain further.
And there he was, in all his regal glory and youth, a ghost staring back at its own blind future from monochromatic photos of his past that had been hand-painted by the local artist from his childhood village.
Cheeks rosy.
Eyes sky blue.
Hair, not white!
“Can you believe we were ever so young?” He asked his wife wistfully.
“Can you believe you used to wear this suit in your youth?” She flicked at the fluff on her way to get drinks.
With a boisterous blast, he pronounced, “Hey, the style that made me look like a dandy back then makes me appear fucking legendary now! Nothing like red velvet and white fur.”
He really did go gelatinous when he laughed, and even after all these centuries, she jiggled at the joy he emanated.
Nick ate pizza with his left hand while flipping through photos with his right, lest he get greasy the filament of memory.
“What was that karaoke song I used to sing all the time?”
“Leather and Lace.” Her answer was deadpan, but with scathing life she then slipped this between her sugar cube teeth, “The man in velvet and fur who wouldn’t stop singing leather and lace. But Lord, how the Lesbians loved you!”
“You could’ve sang it with me. . . .” he winked his left eye in her direction, and all of South America went dark for a split second in an eclipse of light.
“It is a solidly good song,” Bev admitted, “and written by a woman never on the Naughty List.”
At the bottom of the pile was an image of a man lean of muscle and long of height, surrounded by a group of friends of much smaller stature. Not a single one stood in isolation. Each individual was no longer individual. They were all entwined, a crisscross of friendly flesh, elbows became knees and necks became thighs. Not unlike those images you see lining the echoes of school hallways, the forgotten friendships that wove a safety net for all of life’s upcoming challenges.
Nick’s eyes glistened with the just-licked shimmer of a candy cane as he whispered, “We were so young and open and wild.”
Beverley looked over his shoulder as her voice softened to chiffon, “Ah, your original Elven Entourage.”
Nick looked all the way through the photo, as if it was no longer flat but instead a robust Rolodex of infinite memories from his life.
The orotund sound of a bottle being willfully set down on the table shook him from his trance as he heard his wife say, “Well, good thing those old little fuckers are as immortal as you! Go tie one on with the boys tonight, it’s still two whole weeks til Christmas.”