Wednesday, January 14, 2009

I believe in Santa Claus..Some Post (Past) Christmas Thoughts



I remember the year I was twelve. I had just found out ( a little late if you ask me) that Santa Claus was really my father. Actually as it turned out, my father wasn't even just my Santa Claus—he was also Santa for another fifty or sixty kids, most of whom I didn't even know. I was disappointed to say the last, but not Dad—he had big plans for us both that year. I think it was early October when we first began to put his plan into action. We started at the Joann Fabrics together, hunting down the simplicity pattern for a Santa Claus suit. Dad had decided that if we were going to do it at all, we were damn well going to do it all the way—velvet, sheep's wool, jingle bells and the whole nine yards. Unfortunately, by the time we made our last trip to Jo Ann's it ended up being something more like fourteen yards. It was Dad's first major sewing project, and pants are not as simple as everyone might think. Twice he cut two right legs from the rich red velvet, then when we finally got the legs right, we realized that the velvet from that pair of pants and the jacket he'd already stitched together didn't match exactly—back to the drawing board with a fourth set of pants. Thank god that last set turned out just right. My mom was starting to question our sanity and the cost of the entire project. Dad worked for a few weeks like that, every night after work, from nine until after midnight at the dining room table, pinning and cutting and stitching like mad. After he had all the velvet pieces sewn and edged he finished each piece with rich fluffy sheep's wool—the ends of the sleeves, the cuffs of the pants, the rim of the hat, and a tiny white fluff ball at it's tip. Finally, the week before Thanksgiving, all of the sewing was finished, leaving us with what turned out to be an even bigger project—accessories. As the shopping season was just gearing up for the holidays that year—I think it was 1987—Dad went off in search of the final things that would turn him- an ordinary car salesman into the real deal—Santa Claus. He found a pair of wire-rimmed glasses at an estate sale one Sunday, shiny black knee high boots in a an old catalog he found in a doctor's office waiting room, white gloves in a music store down town. Finally he found the final and most important piece in a long forgotten costume shop—the perfect wig and beard to really turn him into the big guy. By then Thanksgiving had come and gone. Dad spent the Friday night after the holiday making his phone calls-- lining up all of our stops. He started with his regular list—my nieces and nephews, some of the neighbor kids, children of the men he worked with, the younger siblings of the kids I played with in the neighborhood. That year something different started to happen though. Word got out. The people Dad usually went to see talked to their friends and families and they in turn talked to their friends and neighbors. By the first week in December, as Dad and I got ready to go out together for the first time, our list had grown to over one hundred houses. We were scheduled to go out on fifteen different nights, the stops grouped by location and occasionally by the availability of the family we were going to see. That's how Dad was-- if you weren't going to be able to be home for Santa Claus, Santa would just come back another day, because no way was he going to disappoint some group of little kids by missing a year. There were a couple of nights when scheduling difficulties would have us covering almost two hundred miles in an evening, criss-crossing back and forth across the city of Pittsburgh as though we really were magical, from the North Side, to Saltsburg, Mt Lebanon to North Huntingdon. The only day Dad had off was Sunday, so we took off right after work on Wednesdays and Fridays and Saturdays too just to fit everyone in somewhere. That meant Dad was putting in fifteen hour days every day but Sunday when the only thing we had to do was go be Christmas for all the little ones. The really funny thing is, I can't ever remember a time when we had more fun, or when I saw Dad smile more often than he did during those busy Christmas months, year after year, running himself nearly ragged. We didn't even miss the year he had his two heart attacks in early September. It was hospital and angioplasty, and very nearly death, but back in action come November, and always with a big smile on his face. After those heart attacks, even though I was only thirteen, I always thought to myself that the year he wasn't able to go would be the year that saw him gone. My teen aged guess turned out to be only off by eleven months. Those holiday months were what he thrived on, the beauty and the magic and the ability to make so many people so happy so easily. He was the holidays for some of the people we visited-- the only part of Christmas they could afford. (because never, ever, in the forty years that my father was Santa Claus, did he ever take a dime for doing it.) In some houses we were the bright spot-- a holiday memory that families would hold onto in photos and videos after loved ones were lost and Christmas forever changed. In others, in most of them probably, we were simply a wonderful tradition, looked forward to eagerly and documented for all the years that the children believed.

A lot of what we saw on those trips made me believe again, just not in the same way. I learned to believe in my father in ways I hadn't been aware of before. He had a wonderful knack for changing things, making them lighter and better and always less troublesome, and he would do that for some of the families we visited. I had always known he was a look on the bright side kind of guy, but never before that did I realize how much he was the bright side, how much of that light actually emanated from him. He brought Santa to life, and changed the meaning of Christmas for me. Watching him all those years changed my heart and made me crave the ability to make things better for others, even in the smallest of ways. After that I thought less about myself, and more about what I was capable for doing for those around me. It made me believe in magic and fairy tales again, even if it was only the ones you build for yourself. That was going to come in handy later, even if I didn't know quite yet. It would help me find a career, give me an unsinkable optimism when it came to the good of others. It would get me through the days like no other tool I could ever acquire. Most important of all, it kept me believing in the ability of a long lost love to come bounding back for a second chance. I had learned that anything was possible if only you could keep your heart open to the magic.  What else could I possibly need?

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