The Big Man - May He Live Forever!
The psychologist stated that upon learning the truth, the child “...might feel betrayed and begin to wonder about other lies his or her parents may have told.”
I became so infuriated at this unknown voice on the car radio that I immediately switched stations to 106.7 FM which plays only Christmas music 24 hours a day through December 25th.
Firstly, I have never known of a child requiring therapy upon ultimately discovering the secret of Santa Claus!
Secondly, I have always been of the opinion that the field of Psychology is overly populated by those individuals who could not make the grades in medical school!
As a child, my belief in the Big Man never wavered for a moment although I readily admit that I always harbored serious misgivings about the Easter Bunny but that probably stemmed from my Father bringing home a real rabbit one year at Easter and my eating their little “droppings” which I thought were M&M’s!
I probably could have used a couple of therapy sessions after that one as it took me several years before I could look at an M&M again but it was the 1950’s after all and all that happened was my Mom threatened my Dad with his life unless he made the rabbit disappear!
Not knowing my Dad was a magician, he did make the bunny disappear and when we asked where it had gone, he simply smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
The Easter Bunny aside, Santa Claus was never a question in my mind. The Big Man, Mrs. Claus, the elves, the reindeer and the North Pole were as real to me as the Lionel Locomotive sitting on my train set.
Growing up we lived in an apartment in Woodside, Queens and every year a real Christmas tree was set up and decorated in our small living room and every Christmas morning there were gifts for me and my sisters under the tree from Santa. Naturally, there always arose some questions of logic but they were always handled very nimbly by my parents. We didn’t have a real fireplace and when I asked how Santa got in the apartment each year, Mom responded, “If the Big Man gets down chimneys, how hard do you think it would be for him to come through a window or a door?”
Made perfect sense to me at the time. Come to think of it, it still does!
Another benefit of growing up in the 50’s was that we didn’t have to deal with the question of… “Just how is Santa Claus able to be in all those shopping malls at the same time?” Back then, there malls were not commonplace! Every December when it was time to talk to the “Big Guy”, my parents took me into Manhattan to see Santa Claus at Macy’s in Herald Square. It never dawned on me that we would never visit Gimbel’s until well after New Years.
One year I came across a treasure trove of wrapped presents hidden in the back of my parents’ closet. (OK, I was snooping!) When I asked my Dad about this he did not miss a beat. He simply told me they were all gifts he had bought for my Mom and he swore me to secrecy. That Christmas morning, I checked both mine and my sisters’ gifts and they all had different wrapping paper than the gifts I had stumbled upon in the closet.
I also knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Santa was real because even when I screwed up really bad, my parents never squealed on me to Santa. One year my Mother was livid at me (I forgot exactly what it was that I had done but it must have been a doozy!) but on Christmas morning, there were my gifts from Santa. Later that day my Mom took me aside and said my Dad wouldn’t let her report my misdeeds to Santa and request I be placed on his "naughty" list but he had given her his permission to "...beat the living daylights out of me and mail my lifeless body to Santa if I ever similarly offended again!" To this day I still can't remember what my actual transgression was but I can state for certain that I never repeated it!
I really can’t quite remember when I finally lost the requisite childhood innocence that allows children all over the world to truly believe in the Big Guy. I think it might have been Christmas Eve, 1968, when I was at recruit training with the Marine Corps on Parris Island and my Drill Instructor wouldn’t allow any of us to hang a stocking my family had sent me on the end of my bunk. Then again, on Christmas morning, the Drill Instructor let us sleep late and didn’t scream, yell and throw things at us until after breakfast in the mess hall later that morning. On second thought, even though he wasn’t allowed to drop off our presents, Santa probably did stop and speak to our D.I. and instilled a little bit of Christmas Spirit in him!
Several years ago, while I was still working as a Warden at Rikers Island, I was asked to "stand in" for Santa Claus (complete with red suit, boots and beard) and pay a visit to the children of Broad Channel at P.S. 47. As each child was presented to me I would smile and place them on my lap and ask each of them for their name and if they had been a good boy or girl during the year. When I asked one young boy named Tommy about his behavior, his eyes flew wide open and, after quickly looking around the room, looked down at the floor and nervously asked me, "Why, what have you heard?" I responded by laughing long and hard and assured the young man that he had no reason to worry because he was on my good list.
I guess what I am trying to say is that Santa Claus is truly the Final Frontier of childhood innocence and, as adults who benefited from his magic as children, we should all strive to keep his magic alive during every Christmas season. If we can make a child, or anyone for that matter, smile for a moment – make them forget the real world for just a little while – to me, that's the real magic of Santa Claus.
The Big Man....May he live forever!
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