Juggling Santa

My pockets were still jingling after the bar let out on Christmas Eve. That’s when he stopped me on the street, again. He was holding out his long-nailed hands as usual, but this time I let him talk. The longer he talked, the more I listened. The more I listened, the more hands he grew. One presented a golden tooth, another cradled my first pet rabbit Snow. This went on a while. I asked what else he had. He grew even more hands, juggling a set of original Titanic silverware, a dozen Frisbees, a village worth of kaleidoscope-eyed dolls, just about every As Seen On TV item I’d ever seen on TV, cue balls from every pool shark from here to the Twin Cities—good god not another gravy boat! A cop told us to move along, we were blocking the sidewalk with all this stuff. The north wind shook me like an angry dad after I’d given away my trench coat to the Naked Neck chicken. My spine felt like somebody was practicing acupuncture on me without a license. Shivers fired all over my body until he dropped everything in his hands, smothering me with millions of bear hugs.

Skinny Santa

I recognize the Santa from a local acting troupe. In fact, he doesn’t look any different than when I saw him in The Abraham Lincoln Story, the costume’s almost the same. My daughter and I wait behind the stanchion rope for pictures. Andy Williams blares from the mall’s sound system. Burning logs glow on a large flat screen.

“He’s too skinny to be Santa,” is her first observation.

“Things have been lean at the North Pole lately,” I say, “tariffs and all.”

An elf with infected ear spacers comes forward smacking gum, asking for an email they can send the picture to. My daughter squeezes my hand.

“Daddy, he’s got a top hat, Santa doesn’t wear a top hat.”

“That’s because Mrs. Claus is sewing a new one, the old one got hooked on someone’s satellite dish in rural Florida last year.”

I don’t know how or why I keep making these things up rather than just telling her the truth. There’s already so much hurt in the world she’ll have to come to grips with. I don’t want to be the one who shaves off more of the childhood she loses every day.

“Daddy, his beard’s black.”

“Hair plugs,” I say.

We’re next. She shifts on his boney sawhorse leg, whispers something in his ear, then he whispers back. I can’t hear what’s being said. After the camera flash we head for the mall entrance. An oversized paper mache sleigh with reindeer sways from fishing line fastened to the aluminum grid ceiling. I say the reindeer are getting ready to make deliveries, but she marches onward, passing the Salvation Army bell ringer, the oversized nutcracker, beelining for the gingerbread man kiosk where I buy her a cookie and she tears open the saran wrap, biting off the head first.