Night of the Santa Claus

We moved from the house -- mom, dad and I -- in Spring of 1986, so this would have been around Christmas of 1983, 1984, or 1985, no later than that. I was standing on the front porch of our home on Draper St., the first home I'd ever known, with a couple of friends. I think one of them was Lyle? Maybe? I don't know. There were a couple of friends present. They'd come over earlier, and we'd just finished playing for the day. We were on the porch, doing that midwestern small talk before saying goodbye, and somehow, perhaps because it was in the offing, the subject of Christmas came up.

"You know he's not real, right?" one of the friends said, in reference to Santa Claus. I stared back at him, perplexed. I want to say it was Lyle who uttered those words, but honestly the memory is a little hazy on the faces, and I don't want to saddle him with the blame unnecessarily. My other friend seemed to share my disbelief but, if I read his body language and intonations correctly, tried to play it off. "Y-yeah, sure, I knew that," he replied. That left me holding the bag. This wasn't something I was aware of. Santa, up to that point, had been as real as you and me. I pushed back, saying something feeble like, "What do you mean?"

Lyle/not Lyle responded mockingly, "Santa is our parents! It's all a big pretend they do for us. C'mon, don't you know that?!" It was becoming clearer that he was relishing the moment. He might have even thrown a "Duh!" in there for good measure, I can't remember. What I do clearly recall is that this 'friend' had shattered one of my childhood beliefs in one fell swoop, and seemed to take great pleasure in doing so. Both friends soon left, the other one appearing rather mopey, probably feeling the same as I, just not wanting to admit it. This would definitely require clarification from my parents, but not yet. We were at least a month out from Christmas, and there was still time to try and digest this new information.

Human beings aren't always rational. Adults suffer from this, and kids even more so. Even when we're older, the notion of someone lying to us for our own benefit, to make us feel good, is something that may be difficult to compute, or even approve of. Children are often less capable of understanding the nuances of motivations and well-intended deceptions. The reality that parents -- a lot of parents in western culture, at least -- lie to their kids about a bearded man in a red suit with reindeer who lives in the North Pole  and delivers presents worldwide one night of the year, and does so for the children's benefit, isn't always the easiest thing to understand for young, developing brains. So it was with yours truly.

I hope you won't consider it boastful of me to note that am capable of, on rare occasions when it is required, being very pointed and direct. I'm not always proud of it, as it can sometimes come across as a cross examination, where I do everything but harangue the other person into not waiting for the translation. Dear reader, I did this to my mom a few weeks after the conversation on the porch. To this day, I look back at it as a cringeworthy (though necessary) moment of childhood.

We were at a fast food joint on what was then North Prospect, before Prospect jumped the interstate. It was the evening, it was dark outside, and mom and I were enjoying a meal together. I'd been biding my time, waiting for this. Far too intimidated of my father for such a confrontation, I knew it had to be mom that would be in the hot seat. We were maybe halfway through our meal when I casually, though pointedly, dropped into the conversation, "So is Santa Claus real?"

There was momentary silence, as well as a blank stare followed by rapid blinking from my mom as she took-in the unexpected question. She stammered a bit, but I think she knew, as I was already at the point of asking the question, that the jig was up. Mom was honest with me. I don't remember if it was her words, or the pained expression on her face and the faltering sound of her voice that made all of the angst I'd been feeling suddenly dissipate, but it ended up being a decent conversation. I understood where she was coming from, and why the myth of Santa Claus existed. It was still a bit sad, though.

"Can we... " I paused, feeling a bit silly. "Can we still pretend there's a Santa, just for this year?" I felt foolish asking, but we were just a couple of weeks from Christmas, and one of the things I looked forward to most was waking up on Christmas morning, rushing out of my bedroom, and seeing what it was that Santa had brought and left in the living room. I wanted to hold on to that magic just one more time, even if I knew it was my parents who were behind it. Mom said that would be ok, and we finished our meal.

Christmas Eve that year was remarkably like almost any other up to that point. We went to our rooms, and I sat in my bed looking out the window at the backyard, staring at the church steeple a block or so away, and looking up at the starry night sky. In previous years, I'd look for any sign of Santa though, this time, wistfully, I knew better. That is why my heart caught in my throat when I saw something, distantly, moving across the sky. It was not much bigger than a dot, and at first I thought it must be a plane. But it had a sort of line in front of it. A dot with a line? And it was moving at a good clip, zig-zagging across the sky.

Any other year I would have known -- known -- that it was the big man, himself, in his sleigh preceded by his reindeer, delivering presents to all good boys and girls. But, this year, I knew better. Or did I? Quickly doing the computations in my head, I knew that planes didn't usually move in such a way, and so, despite the logical half of my brain replaying the conversation with my mom, my heart leapt to the only possible conclusion there was to make.

"It's Santa," I said, softly to myself. "It's Santa."