Thanksgiving was past, long past in my and my buddies 9-year-old
time sense, and our thoughts had already turned to the coming
Christmas holiday. But on a raw December Saturday, the question
every child eventually asks was posed in our group:
"Do you STILL think there's a Santa Claus?"
"Nah, I heard from Stevie that it's just your Mom and Dad."
"Yeah, I think it's for little kids..."
Of course I agreed. But I knew my friends were wrong. Santa
was real. However, I wasn't as sure of things as I had been in
Christmases past, and there did seem to be some inconsistencies
in the Christmas legend. Our chimney led right to the furnace.
Did Santa come through the oil burner then upstairs to deposit
presents under the tree? And the roof of our Cape Cod looked awful
small for a sled and eight reindeer. But these were minor problems.
With the initial seeds of doubt in place, I became more observant
of Christmas rituals. When our Christmas tree was placed in the
living room, I sensed I was helping more with decorating. In past
years, Santa did everything.
Then, a month before Christmas, came our weekly Saturday trip
to my father's bar, Zoli's. Dad, John and I had chores to do.
Inside, the bar's only light came from two plate glass windows
on the side and front of the bar room. I would always walk through
the darkened room to the light switches next to the front door,
where I fished for the key to flip on the overhead and back bar
lights. This was the first of my jobs which preceded my greater
tasks of cleaning the bar and back rooms. John would wash dishes
and bar hardware in the big kitchen sink. Dad would head for the
office and stockrooms in the basement.
One by one, the lights came up -- three overheads, back bar,
back room overheads, and the stage at the far end of the back
room. But the normal routine was broken today. With each flip
of a switch, we saw the bar transformed. Bulbs in the overhead
lights in the bar room had been changed to red and green. The
lights themselves had been trimmed in riotously colored garland.
When the back bar lights went on, small Christmas lights that
had been intertwined with the garland lit up. A small, white Christmas
tree on which stood a white paper angel with bright yellow hair,
a golden glittery halo, and enormous closed eyes with outrageously
sized eyelashes lit up with colored lights. Styrofoam candy canes,
red bows, white branches ... the place glowed.
Swooping garlands festooned the back room, and another small
tree, a spiky, embarrassingly artificial green one, flashed away
in the corner of the stage. Taking in the winking, glittering,
haphazard holiday blaze, I complained, "Hey, how come we didn't
get to help decorate?" John repeated my complaint. "Yeah, we love
to decorate. Why didn't you let us help?"
"I have a Christmas party every year for my bartenders,"
Dad told us. "Part of our Christmas tradition is that we
decorate the place during the party. It wouldn't be right to ruin
their party, now would it?"
We both shook our heads and the matter was settled, even if
we were still a bit disappointed. Most of the college-age bartenders
were like young uncles or crazy big brothers to both of us, playing
tag around the rooms of the bar or lifting us nimbly to impossible
heights on their shoulders until we could reach the swaying overhead
lamps. If someone besides us had to decorate, these guys were
the next in line.
But my growing doubt surfaced while the new decorations twinkled
in front of my eyes. The legion of bartenders decorated Zoli's
with my Dad. Santa helped decorate at our house. Why didn't he
come here? I was getting the feeling more and more that my friends
might be right. Yet I still wanted to trust without question by
the sheer power of faith, as my younger brother still seemed able
to do. It was still magic at the Santa did visit; he just choose
not to visit the bar as frequently, maybe because Dad and his
loyal workers had such fun decorating. Maybe that's how it worked.
Santa does everything until you discover the joy of sharing holiday
preparations with your family and friends. I mulled this over
and thought it might help explain things.
The next week, my family's shopping trip included a visit to
Santa. I was prepared with my all-important list and amazed by
the Santa enthroned in Macy's. My confidence was somewhat restored.
A week before Christmas, John and I were called to assist in
unloading groceries from the cavernous rear deck of the Chrysler
wagon. Because of the cold, Mom didn't want us outside, so she
and Dad unloaded the car while John and I grabbed bags as they
came up the small brick stoop at the side door.
I was standing in the cold on the top landing of the stoop awaiting
my next bag as Dad made his way up the driveway with a bag in
one arm and a large glass bottle of blue fabric softener in the
other. He hit an icy patch and crashed hard into the driveway.
As the fabric softener began its journey in a blue ribbon to the
street down the slope of our driveway, Dad slowly rose, holding
his right hand with his left, trying to stop the blood from a
bad gash across his right index finger.
Mom hustled Dad inside and immediately cleaned and bandaged
his hand, but it was clear they would be visiting the emergency
room for stitches. John and I watched as Mom and Dad casually
discussed the matter. Mom was a nurse, Dad was backed by World
War II Army training, and both had seen to our cuts and scrapes
over the years so this episode seemed another standard injury
to be dealt with. John and I were hustled off to the playroom
and left in our sister Teena's care while Mom and Dad made the
trek to the hospital.
The incident receded quickly for us. The basement playroom held
toys of Christmases past and the room itself had been trimmed
with garlands. A small decorated Christmas tree cheered a corner
of the room. A Lionel train circled the tree and drew us over
as we came down the basement stairs. We flipped on the tree lights
and fired up the steam engine to take turns racing it around the
back of the tree, filling the hopper cars with little army men
and Hot Wheels cars. Mom and Dad returned just as we were beginning
to develop some serious setups of green army troops with Hot Wheels
support vehicles. Dad had a bandage on his hand but said he was
just fine.
Soon recovered, my Dad took us sledding to burn off some stored
holiday energy. On Christmas Eve,. I joined happily in a candle-lit
dinner and sleepily attended midnight Mass. As I dropped off to
sleep, I firmly concluded that Santa was indeed only a fable.
A bluish light crept into our room as I heard my sister rustle
awake across the hall. The glorious day had arrived! I sprang
out of bed and nudged John awake. Teena had beaten us to the stairs,
but not by much, and the three of us fairly tumbled down the steps
and into the living room.
The living room was almost too wonderful to bear. The tree aglow
with lights and ornaments. Piles of wrapped packages were strewn
underneath, and the stockings bulged to overflowing with unseen
surprises. Just under the tree, in our little manger scene, a
golden light glowed brightly, and the little baby Jesus smiled
up with waving arms from his cradle.
But as I stood, nearly blinded by the magnificence of it all,
a small creeping doubt entered my mind and, just a bit, began
to dim the Christmas magic. But I pushed the doubt aside as I
joined the rush for the stockings. Tradition dictated that we
open these first. Mom and Dad, looking a bit dazed, joined us
and gave Christmas kisses all around. My stocking was topped with
a Snoopy doll wearing World War I flying ace goggles. Excavating
further, I turned up a small slider puzzle, a gyroscope, a baseball,
a transistor radio, a pack of PEZ with Santa's head on the dispenser,
socks, and underwear. Interspersed among the stocking contents
were foil-wrapped chocolate Santas and nuts. And in the toe, a
titanic orange rested, along with some small bits of coal, as
a reminder.
Then it was on to the presents. All my boxes were marked simply,
"To: Pep, From: Santa." John had opened a rectangular box that
held a battery-powered locomotive, the kind with mystery action
that would turn when it bumped into a wall. He had it on and was
trying it on the smooth floor of the dining room. I unwrapped
a large flat box that held a skittle bowl game, something I had
on my list. It looked wonderful, with a big plastic tray and polished
hardwood pins and ball.
Although we passed them presents, Mom and Dad seemed to hang
back from opening them. (I could not understand that. Didn't they
want to see what was inside?) Every few minutes, one of us would
urge them to open something. They would oblige us and open one
package to the combined cheers of our small gathering and the
corresponding grin of satisfaction from the child that had acquired
this priceless treasure for Mom or Dad. Little by little, the
packages were opened, and we set about the long work of playing
with first all our own toys, then with each others. As the festivities
quieted, I became aware of the smell of bacon and coffee mixing
with the sharp spruce smell in the living room.
As I wandered into the dining room, headed towards the kitchen,
something jolted my young senses, the shock of which I can still
feel these long decades later. There are times in your life when
your logical world is upended, when your carefully constructed
opinions of the way things work are toppled in an instant. When
this happens, you remember the feeling with clarity, I suspect,
for your entire life.
There, in the kitchen, lay the proof beyond doubt that Santa
had indeed visited during the night. On the washed and waxed kitchen
floor, cleaned to perfection by my mother the day before, were
foot prints. Large soled, muddy, boot tracks. These tracks led
from the kitchen door through the dining room and petered out
heading into the living room, pointing right at the tree and the
recently unwrapped Christmas plunder. The boot prints overlapped
and merged, forming a curving, muddy path that clearly connected
the tree with someone moving through the door. There was no way
that these tracks, if made by my parents, would have survived
a final Christmas Eve inspection tour by Mom. Besides, the boots
belonged to someone who wore much larger shoes than my dad. And
to add to the evidence was Mom's reaction -- she didn't seem to
notice the tracks at all! It was as if this were something to
expect on Christmas morning.
I stood, head humming with thought, as the magic slowly seeped
back in. Santa had indeed come, even when I had started to convince
myself that it couldn't be so.
This shattering of all these long weeks of thought happened
in about a second as I stood on the cold ceramic tile of the dining
room floor staring down at the boot prints. Christmas washed back
over me and flooded all my senses. It seemed as if, simultaneously,
someone turned up a dimmer on all the lights in the house, turned
up the volume of the radio playing its Christmas carols, made
the cold of the tile floor more intense underneath my socked feet,
and doubled the amount of bacon frying in the pan and coffee bubbling
in the percolator. I heard the intensified rustle of John and
Teena sitting in the living room examining Christmas treasures.
I heard Dad humming away at Silent Night. Mom glanced
over from her spot in front of the stove and smiled down at me.
At that moment, I wanted to gather all of them and share my discovery,
but the moment of blinding insight had passed. No one had seen
me riveted on the threshold of the dining room, and I was finally
able to move again.
The remainder of the day, we played with our toys. Mom and Dad
even joined in some of the Christmas play, rolling dice, marbles,
or balls and laughing right along with we children. As we sat
down to dinner in the dining room,I saw that the footprints had
been mopped from the floors. No matter, I saw them still as I
do today, years later, brightly locked in my memory.
* * *
One by one, it became an accepted fact with my friends that
Santa was a myth. For me, my one special Christmas season was
packed with the range of certainty, probability, possibility,
doubt and, finally, ringing, unquestionable certainty again that
Santa Claus was a reality. I had my own small miracle to support
my new-found faith.
I never mentioned the footprints to anyone. But those footprints
were an affirmation. As the Christmases rolled by, I always looked,
not for evidence against Santa, but for the magical events of
each Christmas season, his indicators to careful observers that
he was here.
I didn't find out until nearly 20 years later from a casual
comment by my mother that my parents had help that Christmas.
My father's tumble with the glass bottle had left him with a snipped
tendon in his right hand. He was injured more seriously than we
knew and found it almost impossible to complete even simple Christmas
tasks. When Dad went to work in the days after his visit to the
hospital, his right hand heavily bandaged, one member of his young
complement of bartenders offered to help with Christmas preparations.
On Christmas Eve, after we children had gone to bed, he helped
unload, assemble and get things ready for Christmas morning. After,
I suppose, a few cups of coffee and a sandwich, he said his good-byes
and Merry Christmases and was off to celebrate with his own family.
I don't think I ever met him
I did see his picture on my Dad's desk, however, during 15 years
of Saturday work, exploring the relics in the basement office.
The small, dark room smelling of damp and carbon paper was part
storeroom, part office. At the far end, a steam boiler hissed
and clanked during the winter. Across from the boiler was a desk
in a bright pool of desk-light yellow, a tall filing cabinet,
a squeaky, high backed desk chair. The picture, taped along with
others to the side of the filing cabinet, originally had rich
colors bordered by a crisp, scalloped white. Over the years, the
colors gradually faded, and the white boarder yellowed along with
the tape that held it in place. In all the long years, although
surrounding pictures were rearranged or changed, this one never
left its spot.
The picture was of a smiling soldier on a hard-pack airfield
with aviator sunglasses, a gray jumpsuit and worn combat boots.
A deep green jungle stretched out in the foothills and mountains
behind him. This was the last Christmas he would see. A part of
what he left behind is his name etched into a black, shining,
granite wall in a long list among many others. A much greater
part was his unintentional gift to me through a simple kind act
offered selflessly on a long ago child's Christmas Eve. He has
gained immortality as his gift still lives every time I but think
of Christmas.
And every year it happens. During the rush of the holiday season,
some Christmas magic sent straight from Santa's workshop will
bring back his memory. It's usually a small thing, like finding
that one special toy that has been sold out for weeks on the back
of a department store shelf, or a card with a long letter from
a friend that you were just thinking about, or a silent nighttime
snowfall that wraps all the lighted decorations in a wintry haze,
or, especially, a Christmas memory expressed by a tiny child of
a holiday past when they could barely stand or talk. Little things,
really, no bigger than muddy boot prints on a kitchen floor. I
am certain that these things come directly from Santa's jolly
imagination. It's his way of letting us know he's there, always,
if we just pay attention and have a bit of faith.
