Encounters with Santa, Part III

Getting to sleep on Christmas Eve is a real challenge for a youngster. I had two basic strategies when I was growing up. The first and earliest strategy related to the Christmas Eve tradition of opening one present per person. I would spend the days and weeks before Christmas Eve weighing, shaking, squeezing, and analyzing each gift under the tree that was addressed to me. Then I would choose the one gift that I thought could sufficiently distract me on Christmas Eve with hours of fun. Ideally, the hours of fun, hopefully with a new Lego set, would culminate with a satiated and exhausted me climbing into bed and actually falling asleep. Despite the expertise in gift assessment that I developed, there were years where I would choose poorly, and I would be left trying to figure out how a new set of school clothes could get me to sleep.

As I grew older, my Christmas Eve insomnia did not abate, but my strategy changed as my gifts evolved. That Christmas is a bittersweet one when a boy first asks for clothes or tools for Christmas. It is another step on the road to manhood and away from childhood. Needless to say, clothes and tools will not put me to sleep on Christmas Eve. I went from searching for Lego to searching for baseball cards, video games, or books. In addition, my second strategy developed after a school chum gave me a boxed set of Lord of the Rings. After that, I would read LOTR over Christmas break. My reading would culminate on Christmas Eve when I would read LOTR (usually somewhere in The Two Towers) by the light of the two foot tall artificial tree in my room. Three hours of reading would usually do it. If not, I would read some more.

Several years ago, my nephew was in town for Christmas. It was to be his last Christmas of Santa belief. We could not get him to go to bed on Christmas Eve at my parent's house. He was just too excited and pumped up on Christmas sugars. The hour was getting late and time was required for "Santa" to deliver the goodies. Someone had the brilliant idea of using the extra phone line in the house to call the other line and act as Santa. My nephew's father played the role of Santa. The phone rang in the kitchen and I picked it up. "Its Santa," I told my nephew as I handed him the phone. His eyes grew round as plates, and he nodded into the phone, speechless. After a few moments of wide-eyed listening, he handed the phone to me and said, "I have to go to bed right now!" He almost ran into his dad coming downstairs as he sprinted up the stairs to bed. Today, I believe he claims that he knew it was his dad.


Peace