The Spirit of Christmas Is In Their Eyes
What’s the first thing you look at when you see Santa? Sure, you take a quick glance at the outfit, the beard. But you’re drawn immediately to the eyes. You notice the joy, the special feeling that anyone assuming that role feels when eyes young and old are looking into his, children searching for the Spirit of Christmas, adults searching for their childhood.
When Bay Weekly’s editor Sandra Martin asked me to tell a Christmas story about my times (two) playing Scrooge and Bob Cratchit (once) in A Christmas Carol at Colonial Players, my mind instead raced further back, to the genesis of my Santa-playing, in 1973, when a trio of bored high school teenagers hit the Bowie roads as Santa and his elves.
Christmas 1973
A little girl my mom knows from church is bedridden, and Mom mentions to us how nice it would be to do something for her on Christmas Eve. The wheels in our young minds start turning … The next thing I remember is wearing a cheap plastic Santa suit with plastic spats over my Chuck Taylors and a plastic beard over my baby face.
My friends Mark and Mike are more resourceful, which is why they graduated from the smart classes while I eked through things like drama and journalism. Remember, no Amazon, no internet, not even a Party City to buy elf outfits. No, they get white T-shirts and long underwear and dye them green, make belt buckles and red collars, sew their own trim on their handmade felt hats.
The fourth member of our Best Friends Crew, Tom — usually the ringleader when it comes to our mischievous, sometimes skirting-the-law activities — curses the calendar because he’s stuck in New York with relatives for the holiday.
Even better than the costumes is what we do to Mike’s rusty, white, 1965 Ford pickup truck with the green Army surplus bedcap complete with a hatch that’s the perfect place for Santa’s legs to dangle. We draw the side of a sleigh on a slab of cardboard and secure it to the side of the cap along with two pegboard reindeer my grandmom had given my family. We turn a couple of boxes into Christmas presents, put speakers in them, run a wire from them to a cassette player inside the truck bed (Bluetooth? What’s Bluetooth?), hook it all to a gas generator also inside the bed, put on a cassette tape I make of Michael Jackson singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town over and over, power up a light to spotlight Santa and fill a canvas sack with little candy canes I bought from Giant Food, where I work.
The plan: drive to the little girl’s house, toss out some candy canes and ho-ho-ho’s, then head home.
The reality: about two minutes into our trip, people pour out of their houses — kids, adults, pets — to see what the noise is about. When they see it is Santa, it doesn’t matter that I’m some punk kid on a lark with his friends. What matters is that, when their eyes look into mine, they see Santa. And I feel like him.
No social media of course, so how people blocks away anticipate our improvised route is beyond us. But there they are, waiting in their yards, at the street corners, waving at Santa and his elves, cheering, smiling. And the three of us wondering, is it this easy to make people feel good?
We finally make it to that little girl’s house. She can only wave through her window, but her parents come out and thank us profusely. Mission accomplished.
But because we are stopped, another crowd has gathered, and I’m running out of candy canes. Back to Giant! Here I am, a 17-year-old in a cheap Santa suit, running into Giant on Christmas Eve, grabbing however many bags of candy canes I can pay for, which isn’t many. As I approach the register my boss looks me up and down, says something like “it looks good on you, though” and asks what’s going on. I tell him, and he grabs more bags, fills my arms and says they’re on the house.
My Santa bag re-stocked, we’re back on the road and having the time of our lives. Should we stop? No! We’ve still got gas in the old guzzler! With me freezing but happy on top of a pickup truck, bathed in white light, Michael Jackson music and gas generator fumes, my elves and me tossing candy canes at every unplanned stop, we carry on.
Finally, we notice that our original hour-or-so trip that began just after dinner is now moving toward midnight. We know a couple of girls who will be at Sacred Heart Catholic Church for Midnight Mass, so we’ll just head over there and say hi. Because, you know, Santa and his elves are still teenage boys.
We turn in to the church parking lot, forget to turn off the lights and Michael, both still blaring, and notice the church windows are filling with confused faces — in the middle of Mass. Oops. We turn everything off, make sure we park far away from the outdoor nativity scene because, well, we don’t want that kind of trouble. Mass ends, we learn the priest is not happy — but guess what … the people who come out are! Lights and Michael blare again, Santa tosses candy canes to the newly washed believers, and even our young friends look into our eyes and see … not three posers, but the true, if teenaged, Spirit of Christmas.
The next morning when Mark takes Communion at Christmas Mass, Father Hogan — not known for levity — gives him a nod and a wink and whispers, “Merry Christmas … Elf.”
A Lasting Memory
Over the next decades, I’m a shopping center Santa, a Scrooge (who becomes, in his own way, Santa), a Cratchit and in one holiday show I have the privilege of reading to an audience the Yes, Virginia There is a Santa Claus letter. In each performance I look directly into the audience’s eyes. And they look directly into mine. I see hope and wonder. They see joy.
Mike and I are now retired, Mark is an airline pilot and Doctor Tom still curses the 1973 calendar.
A lifetime of Christmases come and go, and along the way we each lead our own lives. Whatever ups and downs life tosses at me never erase the joy I felt tossing those candy canes with my lifelong friends. And every December 24 since is touched by the best memory of that special night: looking into all those people’s eyes, child and adult, that are reflecting back to me the smiles and surprise and joy of Christmas.
Now if I could just get that dang song out of my head.