A drum set, and other gifts not to give to children.

I found myself in a conversation the other evening in which the topic of Santa arose, and with it came the typical, post-adolescent baggage: How old were you when you found out Santa wasn’t real?

 It seems that Santa has a very thin line of discussability (today’s word du jour). Either you are six, or thereabout, and Santa conjures up images so explosively potent that you have to lock yourself in a bathroom until the feeling passes, and though the whole messy Santa business only lasts for about twelve total hours on the night of his imminent arrival, you still swear to heaven and everywhere else that you will do anything, anything!, if he just brings you what you asked for; or, you’re in your thirties and all you remember about Santa, in retrospect, is how he was nothing but a figment of some adult’s imagination manipulated into a vehicle for behavior modification, and the only thing your parents ever agreed on…and all for an evening’s worth of peace and quiet. (For those children who could even go to sleep Christmas Eve).

And for us, that evening, it seemed that learning the Truth of Santa was pretty much the definitive moment in which we stopped being kids and turned our faces toward that uphill climb to adulthood.

 So, with that in mind, I’d like to turn back and look at a brief timeline of a few moments in my own life, through the eyes of what Santa (as well as Christmas) Has Done To Me, childhood to manhood, or whatever it is I’m supposed to call what I’m doing nowadays. Perhaps I can show that Santa’s not the only “bad guy,” or bad idea, when it comes to Christmas.

1. Age 5 – The whole family should have seen trouble on the horizon, when I knelt lovingly beside the tree and approached, with due caution, an enormous box wrapped in themed paper. This gift would single-handedly set a precedent within my own life that I was destined to meet, time and again. I was a gentle child, one who didn’t rip into gifts, like my other rude cousins. And after the dust of gold bows and the Frosty-and-Rudolph-playing-in-the-snow wrapping paper had settled (FYI: Frosty and Rudolph never played together in the snow. They never even met), there sat a brand-new Easy Bake Oven. Within the hour, I’d burnt my first batch of miniature sheet cakes. But they all ate them without saying a word.
2. Age 8 – We got out of school early; 60% day. U.L. dropped me off at Nana’s; she wasn’t expecting me yet. Uncle Moon was outside, chopping wood (remember how we used to have to chop wood?), told me the door was open, to go on in. I did, and there in the hallway closet was Nana, carefully placing presents on the top shelf. We had an awkward stand-off, and then in true family fashion, she looked me squarely in the face and said, “These are your gifts from Santa. So…just, leave them in here.” I was confused. She mistook that for realization, and continued, “You’ll still be surprised. It’s not like you know what we got.”
3. Age 10 – A time-worn tradition in my family has been to let the children help make the candies, munchies, etc. a week before the Big Day that will adorn all the tables at Nana’s and U.L.’s houses during Christmas week. Typically, these foods have included haystacks, thumbprint cookies, bacon-wrapped parmesan breadsticks, but above all else, divinity. Our family’s secret recipe for divinity actually belonged to Uncle Moon; I can’t remember much of it, sadly. It involved boiling water, a greased serving spoon, and a lot of patience; that much I do recall because patience is something I didn’t have much of, back then. Things that fell under the category of Little To No Patience included, but were not limited to: playing Risk with my cousin Carrie, participating in the annual family Christmas play (I was always Joseph), and divinity. You couldn’t drop but a few white clumps in the water at any given time because they “each needed breathing room.” I found the idea of breathing room a waste of time. Add to this that I preferred divinity to most of the people in my family, and what you have on your hands is a child that should not be in the kitchen making divinity. The only child, as a matter of fact. Everyone else had gone on an Easter egg hunt. That’s right: an Easter egg hunt. I’d actually hidden eggs in the yard to lure them away from the pending divinity. My plan only partly worked. The other children were gone, but then, I dumped all the remaining ingredients into the boiling water which elicited two responses: a) a sheer and immediate reaction not altogether pleasing from Uncle Moon, and b) no divinity for anyone, at all.
4. Age  12 – I never asked for anything, really, for Christmas, ever. It wasn’t out of some bizarre sense of selflessness, or an act of charity. I just never really could figure out what I wanted in time. This led, naturally, to a series of Christmases of random, uncharacteristic gifts from my family, desperate that I should have something beneath the tree both from them and from that pipe dream of a man called Santa. It started at the with the Easy Bake, I guess.  And then, age 12, I woke to find a full drum set, glossily painted red, already set up, waiting for me to do nothing more than summon up my best John Bonham impression and take to the tom-tom. (This soon proved to be a huge mistake, and the cymbals and drumsticks disappeared. The remaining pieces of the drum kit I turned into planters for asparagus ferns). Other gifts , in no particular order, were an early-form, prototype BeDazzler; all the Nancy Drew mysteries in hardback; an Ewok village with whole families of Ewoks; Laurel and Hardy ventriloquist dolls (I actually liked these); and, my personal favorite—a microscope with hundreds of slides, as well as a frog in formaldehyde that, according to the instructions, I was all but expected to dissect.
5. Present Day –I just turned 34, and though it may seem silly to say, there’s one more tradition that continues, even though I’m as old as I am. Despite the treacherous history many my age have had with Santa, I still get a gift from him. U.L. never fails to put a gift (or two) under the tree, a small card attached that reads, “To: Kris, From: Santa.”  It’s just that now I help wrap it the night before; it’s become a ritual. U.L. and I sit up Christmas Eve, we drink some Red Hot (a quick little cider recipe Nana made up), he pulls out the package(s)—they’re pre-sealed, at least—and we wrap them together, sip on the cider, and remember how important Family is. Last year, he handed the wrapped gift to me and asked if I wanted to actually fill out the card, but I said, “No. I’ll let Santa do that.” With a twinkle in his eye, U.L. said, “Fine, but remember, I can’t drink milk, so just put out a Sprite.” With that, I put some tea cake cookies on a plate, grabbed a Sprite, set them both on the hearth,  and went to bed.

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