Well, thank heavens that’s over with! Sometimes I think I’m getting too old for this stuff.
Honey, could I have another of these? This time, less vermouth? And a cherry?
Ah, that’s better.
You know, the days running up to Christmas Eve are so hectic you don’t get a chance to sit down and reflect. But now that it’s done, let me tell you a few things.
For example, here's something that really frosts my snowballs, if you’ll pardon my Icelandic. Every year, just a few days before I climb into my sled, there’s always a television news segment featuring some smart-ass little physicist from the local university who says in order for me to make my rounds to the billions of good boys and girls all over the world on Christmas Eve, I’d have to travel such-and-such distance and I’d have to carry so many tons of freight, and it would take up this much space, and I’d have to go so-and-so fast, even taking into account the International Date Line. And then he says I’d violate the laws of relativity, because something traveling that fast would acquire an infinite increase in mass and time would slow, and blah blah blah, and then they all smirk like they know Einstein and you don’t. And all the adults watching the news chuckle like they’re in on the joke – Good Lord, they don’t even have the decency to ask their kids to leave the room so they don’t have hear this tommyrot -- completely disregarding the gifts I brought the smug little bastards when they were children, the letters they wrote me, all of it. And they wonder why I stopped bringing them presents and their parents had to step in and start buying them stuff to spare them from the consequences of their own actions.
And don’t get me started about Einstein, or Little Albert, as I called him. What do they know about Einstein? I knew Einstein. I brought Einstein presents. I remember his letters to me -- I remember all of the letters children write to me, billions of them. Don’t ask me how, it’s a gift. There are savants who’ll tell you what the weather was on any given day, or can instantly calculate 20-digit primes, or pitchers like Palmer or Maddox who say they remember what they threw to every batter they faced in every situation. Some folks can do it, I’m one of them. To be fair, Albert’s weren’t letters, they were more like pristine, silent wishes, but if a child’s wishes to me are that sincere, it’s as good as a letter – besides, lots of good boys and girls can't write yet. Little Albert heard about me in school from his Christian friends I suppose, and was immediately obsessed with me. I suppose he wanted presents, but I think he was more fascinated intellectually by the scope of my work, and my ability to move at unheard of speeds. He had that curiosity even then. And I recall his first Christmas wish was for a compass and a protractor. You could tell he was special.
I could probably write a book about what various children have asked me for, particularly the famous ones – Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway, Eleanor Roosevelt. But that would be violating a confidence. Still, the stories I could tell – which world leaders wanted their siblings maimed, which cultural icons wanted which weapons, which religious figures asked for dirty pictures -- you can imagine.
And then there’s this -- like I said, I’ve received billions of letters over the years, but how many thank you notes do you think I ever got? I don’t understand why I’m the solitary victim of this sense of mannerless entitlement. If Aunt Minnie got a kid bunny slippers, the kid’s Mom would force her to call to thank her – or a thank you note, in cursive please, or at least an e-mail. But I can bring a kid an iPad, or a scooter, or some juiced-up STEM-based erector set she’s been hoping for with every ounce of her being, and it’ll be 300-odd days before I cross the kid’s mind again.
Another thing that pisses me off is parents who leave it to me to trim their tree. When I come down the chimney, or do whatever maneuver works with the specific HVAC system in the place, sometimes I find a naked tree next to boxes of ornaments, and tinsel and candy canes, and lights – oh, good gosh, untangling all those lights, and heaven forfend if one of the strings is burned out and I have to check every bulb for the problem – that ices my whalebone. But I have to do it, because if I don’t, the kids will wake up and come downstairs and point to the blown out string and say, “Look! Santa messed up the lights!” and the parents will smile patronizingly and look at each other in a we-were-too-busy-humping-to-get-it-right way and say, “Oh, I guess Santa didn’t do a very good job,” and pat the little shavers on the head. Arrogant, bourgeois scum! Like I’m the nanny or the housekeeper or something, there to please them!
But you can’t hold that against the kid – the kid’s probably been very good and deserves a Christmas gift, even if he’s likely to grow up to be just like the parent, or so the recent data suggest. It’s not their fault their parents are reprobates. But sometimes you read a kid’s letters you can see the telltale signs they’re going in the wrong direction. For example, the number one thing kids want is a bike, right? Sure, but there are plenty of shades of grey. A kid who writes “If I had a bike, I could do my morning paper route more quickly and then go to my Little League practice after school -- I’m the first trans girl on my team!” is getting a bike and an asterisk on my list. But then you get a kid who asks for a “Cannondale Topstone Neo Carbon 2” so they can show it off to their poorer friends (if they have any). It retails for six grand plus. I don’t bother with those -- the parents probably already have one stashed away in the garage, and even if I left one under the tree, the kid wouldn’t see it until the family got back from their skiing vacation in Zermatt.
Or, a puppy. There are some kids who ask for a puppy that’s been abandoned, a puppy stuck in a pound somewhere that they can take home and love. You love to see a kid write a letter like that. I remember when I got Timmy’s letter asking for what turned out to be Lassie, that was special. But then you get something like, “Dear Santa, I would like an American Kennel Club registered Labradoodle puppy. My best friend Betsy at the Chapin School has one that’s very cute and I’d like you to give me one that’s much cuter than my friend Betsy’s.” I actually got that from a little girl 30 years ago, and she lived in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan – what’s she going to do with a big dog like that? Who’s going downstairs to walk it? I brought her a play kitchen, since no one in her family had ever seen the inside of a kitchen or was ever going to. Regardless, she grew up and married a guy named Jared and now her kids write letters to someone called “Father Maccabee” whom, I can assure you with complete confidence, does not exist.
Then there’s the question I get most often – what do you really look like? Frankly, you already have a good idea. When Clement Moore wrote that poem in 1822, he described me so precisely as an obese, red-festooned B&E perp – right down to the finger-on-the-nose updraft trick-- that I spent most of the next year worrying if I’d somehow forgotten to use my magical ability to make myself invisible. I can do that, Just like I can freeze time while I work or eat all those cookies without going into diabetic shock. Thomas Nast also had a good guess, better than the Coca-Cola version with that rosacea on my cheeks – I look like I’ve had Botox in that one. And as for that Dutch blackface thing, don’t start me.
Here’s one I always get -- do you and Mrs. Claus really live at the North Pole? Well, yes, we always have, but last July we went outside and there was water up to the front door and a Russian freighter went by. It’s been getting worse every year. So we’ll winter over up here, but the toy operation looks like it will be moving to Vietnam pretty soon. I feel bad for the elves, but they will get a nice buyout package. After all, that’s why you have unions.
And finally, yes, I have flying reindeer, although there’s no Rudolph – if he really had a glowing red nose, the wolves would rip him apart in a minute flat. But here’s something most folks don’t know -- Blitzen wasn’t one of the original eight. He replaced a buck named Pollux. But a couple hundred years ago, we were all done with our route and heading home over Mongolia, when there was some trouble with the sled and I crash landed in the Siberian tundra and Pollux’s leg was shattered by the impact. It was a few days before the elves sent help and it was touch-and-go for a while. Meanwhile, Pollux’s situation was getting worse.
So, we ate him. I felt bad about it, sure, but you know – I’m Santa. The show must go on.
And now, a word.
Four months, eighteen posts, I hope you've enjoyed this arc as much as I have. I want to thank many of you for your flattering responses and for sharing the site with others.
We're going to take a few weeks off now, just to rcatch our breath and think about where we go next. We'll be back around the end of January. But in the interim, we'll send out a survey to readers asking about what they think, what they like and dislike, and so on. Look for it in early January.
Happy New Year and best for 2021. A better year awaits.
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