...and to all a good night...

Face it…there is just no hiding a 5’5’’, 130 lb Sephartic-looking Jewish man in a Santa Claus suit, no way, no how. And if I saw one taking a flight with me, I’d be very suspicious of that fat belly.

But several Christmas eves ago, one of Santa’s most patient elves (who did some decent justice to the elf-tights, if she does say so herself), packed the guy into the rented suit, pillows and all, packed us into the Jeep (Note for the future: it is not good to drive a Jeep with a giant pillow stuck inside your shirt. Of course, Santa and his faithful elf failed to anticipate this) and drove to his best customer’s house, where we were to park quietly in the back, then scamper up the stairs (holding my jingle bells silent) while their 4-year-old grandson Alex was being distracted by the fake reindeer prints his grandpa had made on the roof, then hide in a back bedroom until we got the signal (Note to self, elf: less bling on the elf-suit next time). As we waited…and waited (cripes, kids were getting harder and harder to fake out these days), sweating in our velvet duds, “Santa” grumbled what on Earth had possessed us to agree to this gig.

“I’m Jewish, for chrissakes,” he said.

“So was Jesus,” I reminded him. And then I reminded my husband, a freelance illustrator, how much this customer had contributed to our current lifestyle.

“You’ve got a point,” he said.

Finally we got the signal.

Santa let out his breath, fluffed his belly and straighted his beard. “All right.”

I scampered out, jingle all the way, made a big show of opening up a fake parchment, cleared my voice and introduced His Eminenence S. Claus in my best squeaky elf imitation (which sounded pretty much like Elmo) He did a pretty good “ho, ho, ho,” handed the goggle-eyed kid a bag of toys and then we beat it out of there before too many questions could be asked, like, why don’t we leave up the chimney and can I pet the reindeer and why does Santa have a black beard underneath his white one?

“You think he bought it?” I asked, as we clambored back into the General Motors sleigh, peeling off clothing as we went.

“Who cares,” he said. “I just want to get out of this suit.”

We did this for a couple of years, because after that I’m sure that Alex no longer believed in Santa, and our presence would only result in many sessions of therapy for the kid in his adulthood.

But it was kind of…sort of…fun. The look on his face brought me right back to my childhood, when I had the same sort of wonder, when adults were magic and infallible, and it might make perfect sense that some fat guy hauled by reindeer could land on my roof and come down the chimney.

I hope that somewhere inside each adult, a spark of that child lives on.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all.