Being Santa Claus : What I Learned About the True Meaning of Christmas (9781101600528) Page 5

  “You know, Joshua, when your grandmother was your age,” and I pointed over at her, “she lived out in the countryside, not in a big city. She started not to believe in Santa, so her dad brought her to a Sears Roebuck store in town where I was talking to children. She sat right here on my left leg and told me that she wanted a Chatty Cathy doll. And that year, because she was so good, I gave her a Chatty Cathy doll, even though she was starting not to believe in me.”

  The odd thing was that Joshua’s grandmother had never told me that story. Indeed, I knew virtually nothing about the woman other than her address and what she’d told me about Joshua. But as I looked over at her, I noticed a tear tracing its way down her cheek.

  Joshua’s grandfather broke in, “Well, Santa, I know you’re busy, and we’ve got a little Christmas card for you.” The Christmas card served as a code word for when my clients were ready to wrap up my visit.

  As Joshua’s grandmother walked me to the door and handed me my “Christmas card,” I noticed her staring intently at my face, seeming to meticulously examine every detail. Then she whispered to me, “When I was a little girl, I told my father that I didn’t believe in Santa. And he took me to a Sears Roebuck store. I did sit on Santa’s lap and ask for a Chatty Cathy doll. And I got it that year.”

  I smiled and said knowingly, “Yes, indeed.” Oddly, I wasn’t all that surprised. Seems this was just another one of those unexplainable mini-miracles that I’ve experienced in my life as Santa Claus.

  She looked at me with complete seriousness and asked, “Are you the real Santa?”

  I tipped my head slightly, gave a wink, and said, “I am what I am.”

  Christmas magic.

  FIVE

  Even the Smallest Child Can Make a Difference

  AS I CAME TO REALIZE VERY EARLY IN MY days wearing the red suit, children believe in Santa because Santa believes in children. He understands and appreciates their uniqueness, their passion for the things they love, and their special view of the world. Above all else, he treats them with dignity and respect. Santa knows that children have opinions and ideas that matter—and that sometimes they have valuable lessons to teach us.

  I feel especially blessed to have seen and experienced life through the eyes of one particular child: my stepdaughter, Ashley. I honestly believe I would not have become such a believable and authentic Santa Claus had she not been there to help shape my understanding of children. They don’t call Santa Claus “Father Christmas” for nothing, you know! As she grew up, Ashley never ceased to surprise and amaze me (and indeed, as an adult, she still amazes me to this day). Not only did she continually bring joy into my life, she showed this Santa just how important one child can be in the world.

  When Ashley was just five years old, our family participated in a toy drive for a local orphanage. Believing Ashley to be old enough to understand, Linda and I explained to her that not every little boy and girl has as good a life as she did. Not everyone has a nice house, or two loving parents, or even enough money to buy toys.

  “Imagine how you’d feel if you didn’t have any toys to play with,” I told Ashley. “Would that make you sad?” This seemed to be a good opportunity to teach Ashley about being charitable. Little did I know that it would be Ashley who’d be teaching me a thing or two about generosity that Christmas season.

  “Yes, it would definitely make me sad,” she said somberly.

  “Well, then let’s think about all the dolls and toys you have in your room that you don’t play with anymore. Do you think that a little girl who doesn’t have any toys of her own might enjoy playing with them?”

  “I guess…” Ashley seemed to be having a little trouble with the concept, so Linda and I walked into her bedroom and started looking for toys that she hadn’t played with in a long time. We found plenty. Linda fished out from under the bed a brightly colored plastic hippo.

  “Hey, Ashley,” Linda asked. “Do you ever play with this anymore?”

  “No,” she scoffed. “That’s for babies.”

  “Well,” I suggested, picking up the hippo and pretending to examine it. “Do you think that a baby somewhere with no toys would like to play with this one now that you’re done with it? All toys want to be played with, you know.”

  Ashley still seemed a little confused by this line of logic. So I tried one more approach. “Ashley, what if we pretended that this was a brand-new toy and wrapped it up like a Christmas present? Then we could go out and give it to a baby with no toys and give him or her a Merry Christmas.”

  Ashley thought about this, and then we saw the light go on in her head. “Yeah! A baby with no toys would love to get this as a present!”

  “What about all the other toys you don’t want anymore,” Linda said, pulling out a stuffed Elmo doll. “Like this one?”

  “Uh-huh,” Ashley nodded excitedly. “A baby would like that one, too!”

  “Well, let’s see how many old toys we can find,” I said and smiled, adding, “The more we can give away, the more little kids will have Christmas presents this year!”

  Ashley jumped into the activity, and within a few minutes, we’d put more than a dozen of her old, unwanted toys in the car to take to the donation center. She was clearly getting into the spirit, and my Santa instincts told me there was even more good to be done here.

  “Sweetheart,” I kneeled down to her eye level. “I bet some of your friends down the street also have old toys that they don’t play with any longer.”

  Ashley grinned. “Oh, yeah. I’m sure they all do!”

  “Well,” I said, “imagine how many more babies and little kids could get Christmas presents if some of your friends gave away their old toys, too.”

  A look of wild excitement spread across Ashley’s little face. “Can I go over to their houses and see? Can I? Right now?”

  “I think that would be a great idea!” I said. “Then just bring those toys back here and put them into the car with the others. I’ll leave the trunk open for you.”

  Ashley tore off down the street. We lived in a safe, quiet neighborhood with little traffic, and the kids would frequently run over to each other’s houses for spontaneous play dates. Linda and I figured Ashley would probably get distracted and be gone for a few hours.

  Indeed, we didn’t see Ashley again until just around lunchtime, when she ran into the house, out of breath, and grabbed me urgently by the sleeve. “Sal! Sal! Come quick! You’ve got to drive the toys over to the kids right now!”

  “Slow down, Ashley,” I said calmly. “There’s no rush. We can go later this afternoon, after we finish lunch.”

  “No! It has to be right now!” Ashley was emphatic.

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s no more room left in the car!”

  I smiled. I imagined they’d filled up the trunk and had a few more toys that wouldn’t fit. So I went outside to see if I could do a little rearranging to placate Ashley before we ate lunch. As I approached the car from the back, I saw the trunk overflowing with toys. Wow, I thought. She’s been busy! I’d never be able to close it without moving some toys to the backseat.

  “See?” Ashley said. “There’s no more room!”

  “Oh, there’s more room, honey,” I said patiently. “We’ll just put some of these toys in the backseat.”

  “But the backseat’s full, too!”

  I stopped for a second and thought about that statement. With the trunk open, I couldn’t see into the rest of the car. Just how many toys had Ashley collected from her friends?! I slowly walked around the car and looked inside.

  Toys were everywhere! The backseat was loaded up so high that I couldn’t see out the back window, and on the front passenger seat was another huge pile of toys, leaving barely enough room for me to get in and drive. I was speechless.

  “There’s a few more kids who want to give away more of their old toys,” Ashley reported, all business. “But we need you to drive these there first.”

  “Ashley,” I
said, scratching my head, “how in the world did you collect all these toys?” I was baffled as to how this little pipsqueak had managed to get so many kids to give away this much stuff.

  “Oh, that was easy,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I told them all about how other little kids didn’t have stuff, and how sad that would be, and that our toys would make them feel happy for Christmas. And then everyone wanted to help!”

  At five years old Ashley had done all this. She’d galvanized an entire neighborhood of kids to give in the name of helping others. I couldn’t imagine feeling more proud of my daughter, but Ashley wasn’t quite finished impressing us yet.

  Two years later, Ashley had reached second grade. One day, Linda and I received an unexpected phone call to come into school to meet with her assistant principal. Ashley was an exemplary student who behaved well, excelled in her classes, and was well liked by her teachers and classmates. These kinds of calls from the school usually meant a kid had gotten into big trouble for something, so Linda and I were both surprised and concerned when the assistant principal asked us to schedule an in-person meeting as soon as possible. We came in the very next morning.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Lizard,” the assistant principal said warmly as he came out of his office to greet us. “Please come in and have a seat.” We all sat down, and the assistant principal continued, “First, let me say that Ashley is such a delight. We all enjoy her. She’s very bright, does her work, and contributes to the class.”

  Linda smiled with pride. I, on the other hand, said simply, “But…?”

  My wife looked at me with a stern expression. I explained my comment. “There’s obviously a ‘but’ coming, or else we wouldn’t be here.” I turned to the assistant principal. “So what’s going on?”

  “Well,” the assistant principal’s expression turned serious. “Ashley refuses to participate in the rope climb in the gym.”

  This actually surprised Linda and me. A very athletic little girl, Ashley had never shown any fear of heights or climbing. And this seemed like the sort of activity our daughter would enjoy immensely.

  “She’s physically able to do it,” the assistant principal continued, “but she simply refuses to do it when the teacher tells her to.”

  “Has anybody asked her why?” I inquired. If I’d learned anything about Ashley, it was that she could set her mind to something like nobody’s business. But I also knew she was generally a cooperative little girl, so there had to be more to this story.

  “No, we haven’t.”

  “Well, bring her little bottom down here, and let’s figure out why she’s being so stubborn,” I suggested. The assistant principal asked his secretary to go get Ashley.

  While we were waiting, the assistant principal said, “I’m sure you can appreciate that we can’t really have our students question or challenge teachers when they tell them to do something.”

  Linda pointed at me. “That’s all my husband’s fault,” she said, as if tipping off the police to the identity of a dangerous criminal. “He teaches her to think for herself.”

  “That’s right!” I declared. That was proud papa talking, but I knew Santa would have wholeheartedly agreed. Naughty: never okay. But self-confident? Absolutely.

  “Well,” the assistant principal admonished me, “when an adult tells Ashley to do something, she should just do it, no questions asked.”

  I shook my head resolutely. “No, I don’t agree,” I said.

  The assistant principal looked completely shocked. “What do you mean?”

  “If somebody drives up next to Ashley on the street corner and says, ‘Get in the car,’ I don’t want her doing it just because it’s an adult telling her to do something. I want her to run away. Telling kids to simply do anything an adult tells them to without questioning it is how children get in harm’s way.”

  “Well,” the assistant principal said, “if it’s her teachers telling her to do something, that’s not the same as a stranger telling her to do something.”

  He had a point there, but so did I. “If Ashley’s teachers tell her to do something and she doesn’t understand why she’s being told to do it, I think she deserves an explanation. I think every kid deserves that kind of respect, don’t you? Ashley’s reasonable. If you explain to her why, she’ll be willing to do it.”

  Just then, we noticed Ashley standing timidly in the office doorway. The assistant principal invited her in and closed the door behind her.

  I walked over to our daughter and said, “Ashley, you don’t want to climb the rope in gym class?”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  “Why not?” I asked her gently. I put my hand on her shoulder, wordlessly assuring her that it was safe to speak her mind.

  “Well, I watched that safety video with you, and it said that if you’re working more than six feet off the ground, you have to be wearing a safety harness in case you fall.”

  The assistant principal looked a little confused, so I explained to him that I worked as an industrial safety consultant and that Ashley would often sit down and watch the training videos with me.

  “So, Ashley,” I turned back to face her, “that still doesn’t explain why you won’t climb the rope.”

  “Well, they want me to climb higher than six feet, and I don’t have a safety harness on.”

  I hadn’t realized that Ashley paid any attention to these workplace safety films, let alone that she understood them and remembered so many details. I was reminded of that early lesson I’d learned my first season as Santa Claus: Never underestimate the observational powers of children. They don’t miss a thing!

  For a brief moment, I felt pretty amazed at my daughter, until my admiration suddenly turned into serious concern. I looked over at the assistant principal. “How high is it that you’re expecting her to climb?”

  The assistant principal didn’t look at all troubled by the question. “Oh, the gymnasium ceiling’s only about fifteen feet off the ground.”

  “And you want them to climb all the way to the top?” I asked.

  “If they can, yes.”

  “So what happens if they fall?”

  He stammered, “Well, we have mats—”

  I interrupted, “Wait a minute! Are you talking about those thin blue pads? They’re only an inch of foam! What’s that going to do if a kid falls from fifteen feet up?”

  The assistant principal started looking uncomfortable, and I was furious. “I think Ashley is right,” I said. “The kids should be in safety harnesses if they’re going to climb.”

  The assistant principal tried to go back on the offensive. “Mr. Lizard, that’s not the reason you came in today. We need Ashley to listen to her teachers and climb the rope when she’s told to.”

  “No,” I said forcefully. This was ridiculous! “She’s not going to be told that because I don’t want my daughter to get injured. You know, we all say our children are the most precious things in the world, and all of their teachers in school talk about how these kids are our future. And yet, we’re not doing a very good job protecting them here. Even worse, you’re not listening to what Ashley is saying—and she’s right!

  “The Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires that grown men who are working more than six feet off the ground either have a guardrail around them or wear a harness in case they fall. And you’re mandating that little kids climb even higher with nothing but an inch of foam padding to break their fall? That’s preposterous. So, no, Ashley is not climbing that rope unless she’s wearing a harness.” I finished my rant in a huff of anger.

  You can probably imagine the ensuing controversies, budgetary analyses, arguments at parent-teacher meetings, stories in the media, and fund-raising events. But finally, Ashley got her harness. The school installed a special pulley system in the gymnasium, and parents volunteered to hold the other end of the harness as children climbed the rope in gym class.

  I’ll always remember how proud I felt that my daughter had the courage
to stick to her convictions and not do something she felt was wrong. She proved that even a seven-year-old child can be responsible for significant changes in the world. And truths like that lie at the very heart of what Santa Claus believes. Every child is special, every child is important, and every child deserves our respect. No child’s opinions or ideas should ever be stifled or ignored.

  Because ultimately, as Santa knows, the smallest among us can sometimes make the biggest difference.

  SIX

  “Santa, Can I Come Back as an Elf?”

  FOR THREE YEARS, MY EXPERIENCES BEING Santa Claus provided countless moments of joy for me. I honestly could not imagine feeling anything else while wearing the red suit. Unfortunately, I was about to discover that being Santa Claus could also break my heart.

  The Christmas season of 1995 started out on a very positive note. Word of mouth continued to spread about me, and between new families and return engagements, I had more than doubled my total number of appointments from the previous year. I still did not charge for appearing, requiring only that the family show me a receipt for their children’s charity donation. The thought that I could help make a difference in that way was one of my favorite parts about being Santa Claus.

  With that feeling of holiday giving in my heart, I agreed to a special request that year. At the time, Linda worked as a nurse for a children’s hospital in Charleston. Her fellow staff members knew that I played Santa Claus during the holiday season, and they asked me to come to the hospital for a day and visit the children.

  The hospital folks told me that I would not need to hand out presents. They already had ample toys for the children to play with, and with five floors worth of young patients, it presented too much of a logistical challenge to carry around that many gifts during my rounds. So instead, the nurses would tell the patients that Santa just stopped by to visit and have a quick chat with all the children.