I saw Santa Claus. I swear. And I don’t mean one of those mall helpers. No, I saw the Real Deal Santa.
I must have been about 4 years old, or I had to be because I was still young enough to share a room with my older brother in the “front” bedroom. On Christmas Eve, I awoke in the middle of the night and glanced at the doorway, which was dimly lit by a small nightlight in the hall. There, as plain as the nose on Rudolph’s face, I saw Santa’s boot in the doorway as he turned the corner to enter our living room.
Okay, so I didn’t see all of the Real Deal, just his boot. I wasn’t about to pull a Cindy Lou Who Move and brazenly follow him to the living room, because I didn’t want to disturb his concentration – not when there were toys metaphorically hanging in the balance. No, I distinctly recall lying in bed, quaking with preschooler excitement and feeling like I could hardly wait to tell everyone that I SAW SANTA.
I know there are a lot of theories about Santa Claus. Older, know-it-all kids have a longstanding tradition of taunting younger kids by saying that Santa doesn’t even exist. But these are the same bullies who, in my day, used to fight behind the bleachers after school, and today probably use Instagram to tease innocent young Santa believers.
Some old-timers believe he once performed a miracle on 34th Street in New York, which had something to do with Macy’s Department Store and the U.S. Postal Service.
I believe, like most well-informed children, that Santa is a large, happily married man who lives at the North Pole, is kind to animals (especially reindeer) and uses a simple naughty/nice tracking scheme to coordinate the logistics of his massive Christmas Eve present delivery system.
I don’t have any empirical evidence that Santa exists. At four years old, I wouldn’t have thought of checking the walls for scrapes of boot polish, or searching the carpet for a strand of white hair from Santa’s beard. The only evidence I have from my nocturnal run-in with Santa is purely circumstantial. However, I know Santa exists because my mom and dad didn’t dispute me on Christmas morning when I excitedly announced that I SAW SANTA.
For my parents, this was unusual. My mother wrote in my Baby Book that I was going to be an actress some day because I was so “dramatic.” My parents believed it was their longstanding parental duty to dispute me regularly in a responsible effort to tamp down my vivid imagination and teach me to be calm and levelheaded.
After growing up with plenty of parental disputation, I actually am a pretty levelheaded person. However, I’m not an actress and I still have a vivid imagination.
Going back to my original encounter with Santa, I can only tell you this: if I didn’t really see Santa Claus, my parents would have been the first to tell me. The fact that they didn’t fills me with a sense of warmth and appreciation.
As Fred Gailey said in Miracle on 34th Street, “Look Doris, someday you’re going to find that your way of facing this realistic world just doesn’t work. And when you do, don’t overlook those lovely intangibles. You’ll discover those are the only things that are worthwhile.”
Merry Christmas everyone!
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photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/21345996@N04/2072182368″>miracle on 34th street</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>