A Bittersweet Memory

While at the mall today, I passed the Santa Claus village in the center court. I hurried by, averting my head, as I crossed behind the line waiting to see Santa. I can’t bear the sight of a store Santa during the holidays, as it brings back too many memories.

During the last year of his life, my father mentioned several times that he was going to get a job as a store Santa that Christmas. He was the right age, he had the right build, and even better, he had his own white beard. Though he normally kept his beard closely trimmed, he’d let it grow that year, in anticipation of being Santa later in the year.

Not only was he a good physical match for Santa, he had the right personality. In April of 1995, I’d gone to the grocery store with him one day. While shopping we passed two small, crying children, with their grandmother. They had seen a display of diecast trucks for twenty dollars apiece and had asked their grandmother for one each. As we passed nearby, she was quietly trying to explain to them why she couldn’t buy the toys.

My father looked at them and saw that the children, though clean and apparently well cared for, wore shabby clothing and were obviously from a poor family. Not saying a word, he quietly picked up two trucks and paid for them. Walking back to the family, he wordlessly handed each child a truck. He didn’t make a big fuss about it, as he had no wish to embarrass the grandmother.

The children looked up at him with wide eyes. With his white beard, they thought he was Santa Claus. He let them think so, telling them that while he was here, he wanted to make sure they had their Christmas, and that they should be good and mind their grandmother.

As we walked out of the store a little while later, he told me that those kids reminded him of himself as a child. As the oldest of eight children growing up in a poor family during the Depression, he never had many toys, and he knew just how those kids felt. He said he couldn’t bear to see them cry, and that life would no doubt continue to give them hard knocks, and that he wanted them to know something different, even if just for once.

Three months later, he had his fatal heart attack. Christmas never came for him again. And that year when I saw the Santas in the stores, I remembered his wish to be a Santa, and choked up.

I’ve remembered every year since when the Christmas season rolls around. And I still choke up.