Bedtime came pretty early back when I was a kid. Hmm . . . Come to think of it, it’s about the time I go to bed now. It’s easy at my age. But on a particular night in 1956, it was excruciating. It was Christmas Eve and Santa would be coming. Or would he?
When I was six, most nights Dad put me to bed. He had a tender side. We sang songs together and he told stories until I drifted off into dreamland. Since Christmas vacation had started, I was dreaming of only one person. Besides Dad, he was my favorite hero.
He was fat and wore a red suit.
But one blustery night, a few days before the Big One, everything changed. I remember the wind pelting snow against my bedroom window, blowing abominations and foul tidings with it. It was the night Dad told me there was no Santa Claus. I let him know what I thought of that heresy: I punched him in the nose.
Dad had a tough side too. He was a World War II Ranger. It had been only a little over a decade since he had returned from the front in Europe. That tough side surfaced when he cancelled Santa three days before Christmas Eve.
Nobody punched a Ranger and got away with it. For what seemed like hours, time stood still. My Hopalong Cassidy alarm clock stopped ticking. The snow stopped blowing. The world stopped rotating on its axis. I felt the breath leave my lungs.
It wasn’t that I was not already having my doubts about the man who allegedly lived in the North Pole. Two weeks earlier I had found presents stashed in the closet. The labels said they were from Santa. Mom caught me looking and said that Santa stops early at some houses and has parents store them for him. I was hardly an Einstein at six, but nonetheless seeds of intellectual doubt were sown that day.
Chris and Bruce did their best to water those seeds. Every time we sang “Here comes Santa Claus” at school the week before vacation, they changed the words to “Here comes Daddy Claus.” The more it bothered me, the louder they sang it. They must’ve already had that talk with their dads.
I told myself it takes faith to believe in something you can’t see. I would stay strong. My Santa-believing friend Richard would too. He had even heard bells on his roof last Christmas Eve. My brother and sister believed. Santa Claus seemed to be pretty generous with all of us. Chris and Bruce would surely get nothing but coal.
Fortunately for me, it wasn’t my last breath. Time started again when, through a film of tears, I saw Dad grinning at me. Yes, grinning.
I was a little angry that he seemed to be taking my pain and loss so lightly. But that emotion was immediately overpowered by the joy and relief I felt that, even after clobbering a Ranger, I would live to see another day.
Hopefully that grin was saying that Daddy Claus would still be coming down Santa Claus Lane on Christmas Eve. If he was in fact Santa.
Grace was poured out that Christmas. I had a mountain of gifts under the tree in spite of being in limbo between Santa lists. I recognized some of the packages from the closet, whichever Santa they were from.
Grace was also poured out on humankind on the first Christmas over 2000 years ago. Hundreds of prophecies had foretold the coming of a Redeemer to save us from our sins. The Son of God fulfilled all of them with his birth, death, and resurrection. He brings good news and gives us great joy. But we have to believe in him.
I guess that makes Santa Claus optional.
