"He Who Doesn't Believe...
...doesn't receive."
Late November one year my dad bought a Santa Claus costume.
I don’t remember precisely which year it was. It wasn’t 1996 because I arrived in Hawaii on December 6 and spent Christmas alone for the first time that year. With nothing else to do I took a bus down to Waikiki and on Christmas Eve and while everyone back home was bundled up against the cold I swam in the crystal green waters of the Pacific ocean. He had to have bought the costume either in 1997 or 98. One of those years I spent on Oahu, house sitting for my buddy Cliff and running around with Lorrie and Cathy. I was home on PCS leave in 1999. I remember because I had to drive my brother back to Fort Benning when his Holiday Block leave ended. Somehow he’d been assigned the same Basic Training platoon I had been in three years earlier and it was fun to swagger back onto Sand Hill as a promotable E4 with Air Assault wings and an Expert Infantryman’s Badge, especially since I got to watch my normally cocky baby brother nervously return to training. He got to go to Mike School and I got to return home and ring in the millennium with Craig and Steve on Bourbon street. I kissed a girl at midnight, first and only time I’ve ever kissed girl who’s name I didn’t know.
Anyway, my dad was always big into Christmas and it had to be 1997 or 1998 when he bought himself a Santa Claus costume.
Each year during deer season dad would scout for a cedar tree and in the last week of November we’d make the drive to Bienville Parish to cut it down and drag it out of the woods and into our living room where we wrapped it in colored lights and hand made ornaments several of which are hanging on my tree as I type this. He inherited his grandfathers Christmas lights from the 1960s. They were the big, colored, incandescent, glass bulbs on an ungrounded green cord that had to be wildly unsafe by modern standards but each year I’d help him hang them on the eves of our little house. White lights were becoming fashionable, they were the “classy” way to decorate for Christmas but dad preferred colored lights and so do I. Still do.
Dad was a life long Santa Claus fan. He took child like glee in keeping the myth alive for as long as possible. He told tall tales of close encounters. He swore he saw reindeer flying around. He ate all the cookies and drank all the milk. He wrote return letters from the North Pole. One year I got a set of GI Joe Walkie Talkie’s as an early gift and on Christmas Eve dad dug out his Battalions old Signal Operating Instructions, an actual, old school, code book from the days before digital encryption, and we used it to properly enter the net and try and reach Jolly Six. (If you understand this last sentence then you understand why I ended up in the Army, it was inevitable.) Even after the kids at school had ruined the fun, dad refused to give up. Gifts appeared magically on Christmas morning every year even after he’d confessed to being the one who put them out. I was a grown man, an Infantry Sergeant, and Santa still left gifts for me on Christmas morning. Dad used to say “He who doesn’t believe doesn’t receive” and to deny Santa in our house meant running the risk of never getting a present again.
We BELIEVED.
Thus the Santa costume. While I was nineteen, or twenty, and carefully hiding the cigarettes in my pocket and looking for a way to sneak out and grab a beer with my buddies, my cousins were eleven years younger and still believers in an actual, physical, Santa. My dad had a plan to keep them that way a few years longer.
We had Christmas at my great-grandparents rural property in Bienville Parish that year. I don’t remember why. Maybe because I was home on leave and it was a chance to go deer hunting. Maybe because it was as close to equidistant between all the cousins as we could get. For whatever reason, we had our family Christmas in the woods. All I really remember about the gathering was that my baby cousin caught me with cigarette butts in my jacket pocket and almost ratted me out to my parents. We ate. We laughed. We opened presents. We popped fire crackers. Then later that afternoon, as my Uncle Scott and his family packed for their return trip to East Texas my dad launched phase one of his plan. He slipped into the back room and changed into his Santa suit then snuck out the back door and into the woods.
The old farm house is a quarter mile from the highway down a long gravel drive. In those days the driveway was flanked closely on both sides by long, thick, rows of loblolly pine. It was there my dad hid, in costume, until my Uncle came driving down the driveway. Then he full Santa Claus costume he stepped into the road and flagged my Uncle down. He had a length of rope with him that he claimed was a reindeer's bridal. He told my cousins that his reindeer had gotten loose and asked if they’d seen Rudolph. I don’t know how that weak story worked, but they seemed to buy it. Dad was sure they believed it. He thought he’d fooled them.
But this was only the beginning. His master stroke was yet to come.
All of us kids fed off dad’s enthusiasm for Santa Claus. We BELIEVED. And we were obsessed with the idea of catching Santa in the act. Every year as we waited impatiently to open presents we’d hatch elaborate plans and schedule guard shifts in the hopes that one of us could catch the fat, jolly, old man and definitively prove that he was real. Most years my brother would sleep in my bedroom on Christmas Eve because it was closest to the living room and we were certain if we could just keep each other wake long enough we’d hear or see something. There was always a catch twenty-two. Santa doesn't come until everyone in the house is a sleep. If you stay up all night there will be no presents in the morning. But if you fall asleep then you won't hear or see him when he comes.
That's why we never caught him.
We passed down the tradition of trying though and our baby cousins benefited from technology.
We couldn’t afford a camcorder when I was little, but by 1997 or 98 that had changed. Not only did my cousin Tara’s family own a camcorder they had a no shit fire place to point it at, which is precisely what we convinced her to do the year dad bought the Santa suit. They left the old farm house in Bienville Parish as the sun went down and drove to their house near Ruston where my baby cousin set out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk then very carefully aimed a tripod mounted VHS camcorder at the fire place and pressed record. Then she headed to bed if not to sleep.
As this was happening dad once again put on his Santa suit.
After the sun set we drove from my great grandparents farm to my Uncle’s house. North on Louisiana Highway 9, past the spot where Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down, then East on I-20 from Arcadia toward Ruston. I was behind the wheel with my mother riding shotgun, a Christmas album on the stereo and my dad sitting in the passenger rear seat in full Santa regalia. Mom and Dad had a blue Mercury Grand Marquis at the time and in the dark it looked enough like a cop’s Ford Crown Vic that the few people on the road would pull to the right and slow down to let us pass and when we did dad would waves and shout “HO HO HO.” Some folks didn’t notice, but others did and even at seventy miles per hour in the dark you could see them smile and laugh.
The side door was unlocked when we got to my uncle’s house. The camcorder was pointed at the fire place and running. With his Santa costume on my dad did his part, laying out presents, eating cookies and drinking milk as the camera rolled. Then we said our good nights and made the long drive back to the farm with dad still riding in the backseat shouting “HO HO HO” at every car we passed.
An old VHS tape that’s been recorded over a half dozen times proved to be the perfect format. The resulting video was grainy and dim, hiding the flaws in the cheap costume. The camera was pointed at the fire place so “Santa” can only be seen from the knees down. One minute the film is of a flickering fire and the next old Saint Nick is just there, doing his business efficiently, stopping only for a cookie, completely oblivious to the VHS camcorder sitting in the corner with it’s red recording light blinking. My cousin was convinced that she had finally accomplished what none of us older boys could, she had finally caught Santa in the act.
The tape still exists somewhere. In fact I need to make a note to try and find a copy. For years it acted as a kind of family Zapruder Film. It was proof that Santa existed and for years when the punk ass kids at school tried to ruin Santa our cousins didn't believe the lie because they had the evidence. They believed.
It’s here that this piece could, and in fact would, normally, take a melancholy turn. Here is where I inevitably add a paragraph or two about how the holidays weren’t quite the same after dad passed. I could talk about how much I miss the people who are gone, Papa, Pawpaw, Granny, Memaw, Dad, Aunt Vallie. A little bit of the Christmas I grew up with died with each of them. I could talk about how sad it makes me that my dad never got to play Santa for my kid but how proud I am that at least Aunt Vallie and Memaw got to meet them. There’s maybe room for reflection on the lonely Christmases when we lived in Austin and I had to work a patrol shift. My wife slept alone while I drove around in the quiet darkness secretly hoping Santa was real and just this once I could catch a glimpse.
Or I could talk about how different the holiday is here in New England and how I really don’t mind those differences. As a kid growing up in the deep south I dreamed of a white Christmas as often as I dreamed of catching a glimpse of Santa Claus. Closest we came was a freeze one year that left a sheet of ice in the bed of my dad’s truck. My cousins and I spent Christmas Day “ice skating” around in the back of a short bed F150. It snowed on our first Christmas Day in Massachusetts. In fact there’s snow in the forecast for tomorrow, we may yet get lucky this year. Christmas lights look gorgeous in the snow and say what you will about Masshole’s (and y’all know I do) they know how to decorate for the holidays and they leave their Christmas lights up and shining until mid March, probably in defense against the long dark of a New England winter.
There’s something to be written about how much I miss home during this season, how I wish I could take my kid to Christmas in the Oaks in City Park and watch “The Cajun Night Before Christmas.” It would be nice to dress up and grab a drink with friends at The Roosevelt Hotel even knowing we’re going to end up overdressed in some midcity dive bar. I secretly miss the chaos of a house crowded with people and all the gossip and drama that comes with it. I’d like to sneak out into the driveway when no one’s looking and take a sip of Bourbon with my brother. Just a little one, for the cold. I’d love to head down to the Mississippi river levee on Christmas eve and watch the bonfires light the way for Papa Noel.
But I don’t want to let the day be tainted by my homesickness and I can’t let it be overwhelmed with memories of the people I’ve lost. I know dad would understand my sadness, there were people and places that he missed too but he never let it get him down, at least not that we saw. I’ve read his words now. I know he carried this same melancholy but he didn’t let it show. Not in December. Not during Christmas. Because my dad believed Christmas was a joyous time. He believed in lights, trees, and gifts. He believed in music, food, and family. He believed in holiday magic. Dad believed in Santa Claus. He said you had to. He said if you didn’t believe you couldn’t receive.
And I believe him. Big or small, Christmas is always something special if I find a reason for it to be.
I believe.
Because I saw Santa Claus one Christmas eve in 1997. Or was it 98? He was driving down I-20 in between Arcadia and Ruston, Louisiana, in the back of a blue Mercury Grand Marquis, waving and shouting “HO HO HO” at every car he passed.
No matter how y’all celebrate, have a happy holidays. Thank y’all for reading.
