Genealogy Jottings

Do you believe in Santa Claus?

At our house in the ’50’s and ’60’s, we did. Each year he gave each child the nicest Christmas present he or she would receive. Santa always came around sometime during Christmas Eve while we were opening all our other gifts. Suddenly we would hear our doorbell ring, and we would rush to the door. There we would discover that Santa, like a modern-day UPS deliveryman, had left a wrapped gift for each of us on the front porch. This was the best he could do at a suburban house with no fireplace and chimney.

Only once did we actually see Santa. He was actually a guy from my dad’s office who dressed up in a Santa suit that year to deliver gifts to the children of co-workers. We lived several doors down the street from another of my dad’s colleagues, so our Santa went on foot from one house to the other. Unfortunately, the little boy who lived in a house between these two happened to look out his window just in time to see Santa walk right past his house with his bag of toys. Our stunned neighbor boy thought all his worst fears of being too naughty for gifts had come true.

I was about 5 or 6 years old when I began to suspect that Santa was not as my mother would have me believe. I noticed that when we went out shopping, he somehow made it from store to store before we did, and he looked a little different each time. In an amazing coincidence, he also used the same giftwrap paper that we had. I became very suspicious about the entire concept of Santa, and my mother finally came clean about it. I felt betrayed.

I never got over that feeling, so I did not perpetuate the Santa myth with my own children. Perhaps they in turn felt betrayed at missing out on the whole thing, because Santa visits their homes today. I still prefer to think that Christmas should be focused on something other than a mythical jolly man in a red suit, so he does not visit my house.

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