Oddly Old to Still Believe

The Easter Bunny lived in our front yard under a Chinese elm tree. Dad talked to him sometimes.

“I’m going out to talk with The Bunny,” he would announce, always in the early evening, while we all were waiting for some creature’s shoulder to soften up in the oven. “Don’t follow me,” he would tell us kids, “or else you’ll all get a load of bunny crap in your baskets this year, understand?”

We kids would crowd in the big front window and watch Dad as he walked diagonally across the front lawn puffing on a White Owl cigar. He would stop in front of the big ugly elm tree — like a spider plant on steroids — and knock on the bark. Then he’d step behind the fat trunk, as if he had been invited inside for a chat, and disappear from our view.

A few minutes later, he would step out from behind the tree with a family-size bag of jelly beans in his hand, and we would cheer him from the window.

Now an adult, I like to imagine what the neighbors across the cul de sac were thinking as they watched this man, who, from their vantage, usually just looked to be a tireless piece lawn-tending equipment, knock on a tree, step behind it, stand there motionless for five minutes, then pull a large bag of candy out the front of his cut-off jean shorts. Perhaps the neighbors’ children had their illusions of the Easter Bunny shattered earlier than most, but for me, faith that a giant, benevolent, bipedal rabbit lived under our property outlasted my faith in doctors and the news. Dad, a self-proclaimed heathen, precisely knew what it took to inspire belief — all the things organized religion lacked. Universalism wouldn’t work. Kids are naturally egocentric. It made sense that the Easter Bunny lived in OUR yard, under OUR tree, and that only OUR Dad could speak with him. Really, how could it be any other way?

Santa Claus, on the other hand, was ridiculous. I never believed in the guy. The plausible notion of an Easter Bunny was hard enough to hold onto while growing up behind seven older siblings who could crush your fantasies on a whim. Santa didn’t stand a chance, what with his living in the North Pole and caring about everyone equally. Not that Dad and Mom tried very hard to keep the secret. They kept our presents in the back of the car, where they could be plainly seen through the rear window. And a day or two before Christmas, when it was time to wrap them, they were carried through the house and into the basement in translucent grocery bags. The Little Guys were not allowed to go downstairs until further notice. This was a problem because the only TV was downstairs.

“Why can’t we come down?” we would scream through the basement-leading door, over sounds of crinkling wrapping paper and whining Scotch tape rollers. “We know you’re wrapping presents and that Santa isn’t real! X-Men is on, for the love of God!”

“Don’t go fiddly-fartin’ around with that doorknob!” Dad would reply. “Or else Santa might just decide to return all this crap!”

None of this is to say that the holidays were not joyous times in our house. Generally speaking, my childhood was a tragedy without any of the sadness. On Christmas Eve, we would venture out with Dad to haggle with the boy scouts over the price of a tree. “C’mon kid. Five dollars. You know as well as I do this sucker’s goin’ in the chipper tomorrow!” When we arrived home, we would string the stockings and tinsel the five-dollar tree, placing atop it a deformed, machete-wielding Santa that one of my siblings had pinched from bread clay in grade school.

Christmas was a time for reveling in historical refuse, hauling out all the green and red and white crap we had made through the years — clothespin cyclops reindeer, two-pound clay snowflakes with our names scored in, wrinkled crepe wreaths, a whole manger scene of newspaper-mâché shampoo bottles, perforated tin can lid ornaments, more stuffed baby Jesuses than Dad could shake his head at — and deck the house with it all. Then we would dress to the fours and hit the crowded evening mass to snicker at all the once-a-year Catholics who did not know their calisthenics — when to sit, stand, kneel — or the words to the Nicene Creed. To hear a thousand people simultaneously mumble through the declaration of their supposed most deep-rooted faith is like listening to the country’s gut. Ambivalence, obliviousness, and shame, but nonetheless a creed. I liked deciphering the great, muffled grumble, zeroing in on the creeds of the people standing closest to me:

“I believe in one God,

the Father, the ssjrighmity,

maker of heaven and schnapps,

and of all things snergillgleke and fkddalyump!

I believe in de-worm, Jesus, right?

the only rhubarb rhubarb,

stored in a cool, dry place,

God from God, stars and stripes,

true God from margarine,

forgotten, not spade, golfing with my Father”…

All these extra C&E Catholics — Christmas and Easter people — required additional priests, so our parish flew in reinforcements all the way from Oregon, and our family made it tradition to attend an evening mass celebrated by a friendly homosexual who gave the same homily every year, about somehow finding the true meaning of Christmas on a hot summer day while trapped in a dark, sweltering auditorium with four hundred male students during a power outage. The man did a forty-five-minute mass, and we loved him.

We’d head home to wash Jesus down with a nuked Nesquick before being rushed off to bed with warnings that Santa would not come until we were asleep. Then we would sit on the floor in the bedroom and listen to presents coming in by way of the garage, wait for the house to settle down, for Dad’s snores in the ductwork, and then we’d sneak out to sort our gifts in the cool-fire glow of the knee-high kerosene heater.

But it was all downhill after age eight. One year you’re going along with the illusion, and the next it’s insufferable. One year you’re demanding to open presents while the sun is just rising in Mongolia, and the next you’re up at noon chanting thank yous for underwear and rubber severed fingers. The Christmas spirit undergoes a rapid change of state, from fresh snow to dirty water. Then you’re a teenager and the holiday is nothing more than a time of forced cheer and dry ham. That’s it for most people. They never get the spirit back, despite how much yard art they buy.

In college, I learned that the Christmas spirit was really all about drinking. Over the holidays, I’d visit Jackson’s house, and we’d drink together in his musty basement. His mother delivered the mail. At Christmastime, she received letters to Santa Claus from children all over the county. She then typed up a form reply — addressed from the North Pole — and delivered it. The woman was full of the Christmas spirit, practically an elf herself (not in the Tolkien sense, but more in her stature and ability to fit through small spaces with primal cuts of Hereford). And like everyone else who’s full of the Christmas spirit, she was just dying to share it. She let me and Jackson read the letters.

We would pile them in the center of the kitchen table and read while eating steak from a butchery within walking distance and drinking ale from Pennsylvania and listening to Gene Autry from beyond the grave. I guess it’s human nature to try to concentrate our favorite things like that, but Jackson and I didn’t feel like humans at all; we felt like Santa, reading the deepest, most earnest prayers of a corrupted generation.

    Dear Santan,

    I want a Xbox this yeer. Can you help me out with that? I would realy love yu. I want a hole stor of Nike cloths to. Please bring me this stuffs. Thanks Santan. Yu are the beast.

    Hay Sant,

    Thiss yer I wont 5 grenades and canser medicn for my grampaw if you have time if not thas ok just grenades

    Hi Santa,

    You look reeeeellly good. Have you lost weight? I am just writing to let you know that I want a bigger TV and a gaming chair and an iguana this year. I love you so much. Please do not forget the iguana, or I might not love you as much. Don’t make me cut you, Santa.

We laughed a lot, but the letters never got much better than that. While standing in for Santa, you recognize quickly that Xbox is about the easiest word for a five-year-old to write with a pencil, and that the human child has all but mastered the tone of the disingenuous professional email by age six. Children are natural swindlers, which is their best quality. (Wouldn’t democracy and daily life go much more smoothly if we treated people as if to swindle toys out of them?)

Jackson and I were most interested in the letters from oddly old children. Believing in Santa Claus has an expiration date. If at ten years old you still think he’s real, you are a freak. This is deduced from an assumption that you have no social circle to learn from, weird parents who kept the truth from you, and not enough exposure to television, which would have spilled the beans at one time or another. Around Christmastime in my junior year of college, Jackson’s mother came home with the following letter, a full, beautifully-handwritten page:

December 23rd

Dear Santa,

Well, here we are once more. Let’s start off by saying that I’m terribly sorry my siblings and I are so late on this this year. I have been so busy (as have been my siblings), and we’ve been caught up in a TON of things going on these past few weeks. However, we didn’t forget you, and today we had a half-day, making the perfect day to write the letter!

The past year has been fantastic. I’ve been blessed with so many things and am very grateful for them all. This year for Christmas, I would like:

    -Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now” CD

    -Microsoft Office (for Windows 7) or Adobe Creative Suites

    -Madden

    -Rock Band 3

    -Sweat Pants

Short list this year; probably because I don’t want to rush you on anything, as my siblings have their lists as well. My friends have once again tried to tell me you’re not real; however, I refuse to believe them. I still believe in you, even though I’m 16. Is that a record?? : )

This year I also have yet to make my Christmas wish. My wish this year is: “I wish for my family and friends to have a Christmas full of magic, love and AWESOME.”

 If you could do that for me, that’d be great, because my family and friends deserve that this Christmas.

And so, it’s here that I end my letter, in hopes that I can get this off to you before tomorrow. Thanks for everything you do, Santa. You’re one of the coolest guys I know.

    With Love,

    XXXXX XXXXXXX

Jackson’s mother always promised Jackson and me that WE could write the form reply to the children if we could keep it kosher, but we never managed. For some reason, we felt the need to mock and torture this childhood institution. We didn’t want to write form replies either. We wanted to respond to each child individually, do research and some spying, and then reply as a cold, omniscient being.

Tough beans Eric, no Xbox for you. Should have eaten your goddamned applesauce last night after your father told you three times. Better luck next year. — S. Claus

I think it annoyed Jackson and me that these kids thought they could get anything they wanted from us with a bit of wheedling. How could we, Almighty and All-Knowing Santa Claus, pretend to overlook all the horrible things these kids must have done during the year and grant their every wish just because they put cherries on top of their pretty pleases? We couldn’t. So we were never allowed to respond to them.

We only begged permission to respond to the sixteen-year-old. At the time, Jackson and I were only twenty years old ourselves, and, as Santa Claus, we found that letter personally insulting. The fours and fives could be excused for underestimating our power. For all they knew, they were gods themselves. That sixteen-year-old, on the other hand, knew the type of man it would take to hold a world’s worth of gifts in a canvas bag upon his back, to capture and break nine mutant reindeer, then pilot them all over the planet, park the cargo-ship-sized sleigh on a bungalow roof, go down all the chimneys in the world — even on houses without chimneys — and hand-deliver every package in a single night. We could do all this, and she was asking for CDs and sweatpants?

“Just who the hell does this kid think we are, K-Mart?” Jackson snapped.

“Leave the poor kid alone,” his mother scolded. “She wrote you that nice letter!”

“This kid’s lying through her teeth.” Jackson belched, and the smell of Christmas wafted over the kitchen table. “If I were sixteen and believed in Santa, I’d be an angel all year, write early, and ask for the world!”

“Maybe she’s just not as selfish as a Grinch like you!”

“I’m with Jackson,” I said. “She’s limiting us, which means she doesn’t think we’re divine.”

“Sinful,” Jackson said, wagging his chin slowly above the mouth of his beer. “I’d show her if she were eighteen.”

A cat hacked into some apropos dry heaving under the table.

“I don’t think she believes at all,” I said. “She even says she still believes, like she won’t later. If she knows she won’t believe later, then she doesn’t really believe now.”

“If the girl doesn’t believe,” said Jackson’s mom, “then why would she sit down and write that letter and mail it to The North Pole, huh?”

Now that was the question. Back when I believed in the Easter Bunny, I used to wonder pretty much the same thing about the C&E Catholics. If they really believed there was a God who would one day either put them on a cloud or inside an incinerator with “Santa Baby” playing on an eternal loop, then why wouldn’t they come to church every week? Why not remember the creed a little better? But then I grew into a C&E Catholic myself and decided it wasn’t that simple. As I sat in Jackson’s kitchen, I felt that firm belief in anything but the fermentation of barley was arrogant and always the result of a lack of information.

“What should we do about this kid?” Jackson said to me. “Box of dog crap? ‘Rein’-deer carcass in the driveway?”

“Now you can’t be mean!”

“C’mon Ma, this is what I want for Christmas! Let us do this!”

“No way!” She stormed over and started gathering up the letters. I plucked the sixteen-year-old’s out of her arms and put it in my pocket. I found it interesting that the girl had no idea that she did not believe in Santa Claus. I already wanted to be a writer by then, and I was under the impression that writing what you meant was the hardest thing in the world. Now, I could see that was not true. The hardest thing was deeper. Much, much deeper. My thoughts, my words, the books I would write, they were not my beliefs. They were interpretations of my experiences and emotions. Interpretations can be wrong, and that meant everything. As Jackson wrestled his mother for the letters, I looked up into the dusty milk glass lamps over the kitchen table and began a silent prayer:

“Hail Mary, full of mace, the force is with you, blessed — Ah screw it. Jesus! Santa! This year, for Christmas, help me believe what I really believe! And then, as a stocking stuffer, if you’re not too busy, make me brave enough to write it down.”

I still have that girl’s letter to Santa. I practically wrote it myself.