Finding a Santa story

Today's Holidailies prompt is to tell a memorable story about going to see Santa at the mall, as a child or with children. I have the above photo to show you, but surprisingly few Santa-related stories from my childhood. You'd think we'd have a family story where someone peed on Santa when they were little, or pulled off his beard, or did some other bizarre or awful thing. But we don't -- we must have been oddly well-behaved, or if we were badly behaved it was in a boring way, like running around and getting fidgety in line.

I remember walking through one of those long "winter wonderland" displays in a New Orleans-area mall every year for a few years as a child -- I think it was Maison Blanche because I vaguely remember Mr. Bingle being there, but I'm not entirely sure. It could have been D.H. Holmes. Santa seemed almost anticlimactic, as I preferred the decorations and the little animatronic figures (or maybe I'm imagining those? I feel old) to actually dealing with the big guy in red. After a certain age, you don't really believe he's Santa, anyway, and you just want to tell him what you want loudly enough for your mom to hear. It sometimes seemed more like a photo opportunity than anything magical or special.

Wait. I do have a Santa story, but it doesn't involve the mall. It took place at the house where I grew up, on Christmas Eve. Have I told this one before?

I can't even remember which year this was, but I think my youngest brother wasn't born yet and my other siblings were still young enough to believe in Santa Claus, or on the verge of losing belief. We had just arrived home after the traditional family attendance at afternoon Mass on Christmas Eve. We were starting to prepare for my family's big open-house party, and someone rang the doorbell. Which guest would show up that early?

It was Santa Claus.

Santa, who was not recognizable as a friend/relative in disguise by anyone in my family, showed up and called all of us kids by name, and was generally jolly, you know ... being Santa. My brother and sister obviously believed this was the guy, especially since everyone else in the family looked stunned and surprised. Santa even asked to see my little brother's room to find out if he'd been a good boy and cleaned it up for Christmas, and my brother rushed ahead, trying to stuff messy things in the closet. He spent a fair amount of time that night tidying things up, as I recall.

Santa didn't stay long, and we weren't able to get a photo with him. He walked down the block in the dark after a last "Merry Christmas!" I pulled my parents aside and asked who that was; they had no idea. To this day, they still don't know. In retrospect, it sounds almost creepy: a complete stranger showed up at the house and we let him in because he was dressed as Santa. I think my parents were sure it was Mr. So-and-So from down the street who often put on a Santa suit for various church functions, but we eventually moved to the house next to his, and he assured us it wasn't him.

The unexpected Santa gave my brother and sister another year to believe in Santa, and gave all of us an unsolved mystery along with a good story that we still like to tell about Christmas Eve. I'd end with "Maybe we all believed in Santa that year," but that's just a little too hokey, isn't it?

Posted at December 19, 2007 03:20 PM