Jesus, Mary and Santa

There's a myth about Santa Claus. No, not that one--the one you avoid revealing to your kiddies until that ripe, sarcastic age where they discover an excuse to rummage throughout the house for their PlayStation III. Rather, the one about Santa living at the North Pole.

Technically, the North Pole was actually mistaken for a magnetic field buried near the Yukon Territory. Since Santa's been around since the 1800's before that little faux-pas was made, Santa would be Canadian. But if you hear Santa's hearty ho-ho-ho, you'd never detect an "ah-boot" in Santa's tone. Go to the mall and listen to Santa. That can't be accurate.

Meanwhile, Santa is supposed to know everything. Thus, the real Santa knows where the North Pole is, so a mistake by an explorer would hardly throw Santa off, especially since he signed Rudolph to lead the slay, way back when.

The thing about Santa, though, is that he's the playful American dream of everything people want God to be. And that's sad. Santa will even tell you that. People go to Santa for everything they want, with a list. Much like they pray to God: with a list!

Santa is not omnipresent, though he knows when you are sleeping. Santa is not omnipotent, though he knows when you're awake. Santa's list isn't written in the Lamb's Book of Life, though Santa does most often know when you've been bad or good. At least until you get a license.

Santa, like the Guy Whose designated birthday Christmas was named for, is forgiving. No, you can't sin against Santa, according to the Bible at least; there is no mention of Santa in the King James (the Apocrypha perhaps?). There's nobody named St. Nicholas (Nicodemus would be the closest) in the Great Book, or Chris Cringle. But Santa always came through for the Borrello children every Christmas, despite our mother's stern warnings while we misbehaved.

Santa's forgiveness in my family was shown every Christmas, despite countless threats from our beloved mother, whom promised to give each of her children all the stuff we broke in her house as wedding presents.

Every year, everything we asked for was under the tree. And we'd stick it in our mother's face every Christmas, after 365 days of threats as we broke closet doors and roughhoused. Santa always came through no matter how much and how often we tortured our blessed mother, much like Christ forgiving His children for all the times we've sinned.

Our poor mother. On countless occasions she would use the S-word to get us to behave. (Santa. Not...) And Christmas after Christmas, we would tell, in other words, that she should just relax and be more like Santa.

"Santa's cool, Mom. Why can't you be more like Santa?"
"You threaten us every year, and every year Santa gets us our stuff."
"Santa is a forgiving Santa, much like Jesus. Right mom?"

Great. She had to have Santa AND church thrown back into her face while we tore the house apart while re-enacting Wrestlemania III.

As I got older (seven), I started having second thoughts about Santa. Not that Santa wasn't real. God forbid! That thought never entered my head.

Nah, they had more to do with our father telling us Santa was NOT like Jesus. That, while Santa may know when you sleep, when you're awake, when you've been bad, or good, and somehow when you've gone days without bathing, that Santa doesn't know EVERYTHING. And since Jesus was God, and Dad was loud and wore a scary mustache for years, we believed him. Just like the way (he said) he scared his co-workers at Al Tech. But then, like all smart children, we exploited he idea.

We figured that while Santa had an idea of how we behaved, Santa couldn't possibly see everything, so we just went on our usual housewrecking ways with our tiny digits crossed hoping that Santa was paying more attention to those evil Commie kids over in the Soviet Union.

Not to mention, like people who only attend church twice a year, we thought the few good deeds we broadcast to every grown-up we knew would wipe out the millions of problem-child antics that gave our mother gray hair as early as her late twenties. And since Sissie and I told everyone about the few times we did something good for someone else, the parents in the neighborhood must have thought Butch and Mary Borrello of Alfred Heights had the most rotten children in Silver Creek.

At least that's what Mom said.

Like with today's Birthday Boy, you can't just be nice as often as Bills playoff appearances and expect everything to be all right. There are consequences. Like the opinions of relatives and neighbors. But those meant more to our parents than us kids, so we proceeded to be little brats.

But, of course, Santa is cool. Santa is loving. And despite badly behaved year after badly behaved year, Santa still delivered on-time like UPS.

What was odd about Santa though is that unlike most people Sissie and I knew, Santa didn't wrap our presents. Santa just threw them under the tree. Of course, Santa was smart enough to know the surprise wasn't inside the wasted paper that kills more trees every winter than the pines people cut down for their living rooms. The surprise was the shock every year that our naughtiness had not caught up with us for another Christmas morning. Fear only dawned on us on Christmas Eve.

That didn't stop our father, however, from running out of the bedroom after waking-up to the rattling of remote control cars and Sissy voicing her new Barbies around 12:27 am, December 25, 1987. Dressed only his (we'll spare him posthumous embarrassment and say...) boxers and going "Jurassic Park" on us, Papa threatened to call Santa back and give our new stuff to those "starving kids you see on TV."

'You mean those starving kids with Sally Strothers? Yeah dad, we know.'

A few days after Christmas, we'd wander down to the basement and find the boxes our gifts were packaged in. The thing is, they weren't in packages Christmas morning, unlike our birthdays, where everything was wrapped, and then mis-assembled by my dad, who eschewed instructions booklets. Again, since Santa was Santa, everything appeared under the tree the way it should. Thus, Santa had to be real.

Right?

And then the wheels started turning. Why would Santa conveniently leave the broken toy boxes in the basement, when Santa was environmentally friendly enough not to wrap our toys before leaving them under the tree?

Sissie's theory was that Rudolph got tired, and didn't want to take all that trash back to the North Pole with him. But I, always the smartest of Butch's and Mary's (then) three children remembered both of his grandmothers telling him that Santa had arrived early at their houses to bring toys before. So clearly, Santa could make extra trips if he had to. I mean, does a child need a well-thought explanation at 7 years-old? It's Santa for cryin' out loud! He can do anything.

Except do everything Jesus did. Yes, Dad, we know! Thanks for not letting us receive chocolate for Easter until we were in our teens. We got the message!!!

But then, more wheels started turning. Why couldn't Santa take his trash with him? In fact, if Santa made the toys, why did he need boxes with pricetags from Hills on them in the first place?

Again, Sissie referenced the "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" movie and said that the toys Santa made were "looked old." That, and it didn't look like Santa had enough elves.

But this child's mind kept wandering and thinking that Santa was better than that. But, I suspended reality for another year until trash downstairs returned the following Christmas. Meanwhile, the Easter Bunny never existed, which then posed some curiosity that has crossed the minds of millions of American kiddies: How is Santa real, but the Easter Bunny not real?

Papa had a simple answer: because bunnies can't talk.

Good enough.

As long as he could justify Santa a little longer to his kids who would be crushed if they learned otherwise, and as long as the kids still believed the someone in a red suit, who lived on top of a frozen ocean, who flew around in a sleigh led by reindeer and somehow sneaked into a house without a chimney without having the cops called (once without a chimney), he was OK with it.

Eventually though, we learned the truth about Santa Claus.

Every year, like most children, we left cookies and milk out for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer. One whole carrot for nine animals. Brilliant. Perhaps Santa would try that loaves and fishes trick, except, he's not Jesus.

And each year, Santa left us a note. Only in 1989, the handwriting on the note looked hauntingly like the cursive notes I brought to my teachers after my annual battles with tonsillitis.

The wheels in my head finally stopped. I realized I had seen Santa every day of my life. And since the milk was always gone every year, and Dad never drank milk, Santa could only be one other person.

But in that note, Santa also left us a message.

That Santa is real. And forgiving. And loving. And knew when we were sleeping and awake, and most often when we were bad or good, albeit mostly bad.

Because Santa never lived at the North Pole after all. Either North Pole. Santa lived with us. Santa taught us all about life and the most important reason behind Christmas--Jesus Christ Himself.

Santa made sure we were well fed, brushed our teeth, and threw us in the tub once in a while as we screamed bloody child abuse against it while our hands collected magic marker stains like Henna tattoos.

Another myth about Santa was that Santa never had kids. But oh, Santa did. At least five that I know of.

See in my family, dad got most of the attention because he was larger than life. He was a legend. He was the guy with the stories, the famous temper, the great laugh, the counselor, the guy everyone looked up to.

But it someone else in the family who kept everything together. And like Jesus, never held our trespasses against us, even as we mocked her as she warned us of Santa's watchful eye.

That same someone who made sure the presents were unwrapped, that the tree looked spectacular, and that everything underneath it looked like Santa had magically placed the presents there.

And Santa did place them there. The only Santa I've ever known.

This year, my mother said all she wanted for Christmas was for me to write her a story. But this writer doesn't do fiction.

For once, I'm going to give Santa the present she deserves for putting-up with rambunctious children for almost 30 years.

Merry Christmas, Mom.

Or, Santa.