THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 18, 1994 TAG: 9412140434
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
The discovery that Santa Claus is just another myth is every American child's initial introduction to reality. I learned the sad news when I was 8, but didn't have the good sense to keep it to myself. As a result, I became the Berkley untouchable of the 1917 Yuletide season.
Since my mother had been unwell that winter and was in no mood to take me and my siblings across the the river on the ferry to Norfolk to ``see Santa Claus,'' my father, who hated Christmas, had to substitute. Unlike my jolly mother, who delighted in any fiction so long as it lent a rosy glow to everyday existence, my father was a no-nonsense man. And it didn't take me long to realize that his way of shopping was poles apart from the pre-Christmas junkets I had formerly experienced with my mother.
As I recall that particular expedition, my brother, my sister, and I were permitted only a few moments to pay court to the moth-eaten bibulous Santa who presided over the toy department of the old Miller, Rhoads & Swartz's department store on Main Street. After that, we were hurriedly marshaled through several emporiums to indicate what we would like to find under the tree on Christmas morning.
Unlike my mother, who could arrange for purchases and deliveries with meaningful winks and smiles behind our backs, my father took notes in the open. Consequently, a few days later when I was exploring the closet in his bedroom, I was not surprised to find most of the toys we wanted tucked away on an upper shelf. Then and there, the revelation that Santa Claus was a fiction dawned on me with crystal clarity. At the same time, a big question mark concerning the veracity of my elders also first reared its ugly head.
If I had been content to let the matter rest there, all would have been well. But blatherskite that I am, I had to spread the news. And it was not long before I had the perfect opportunity. That year my class at Robert Gatewood Elementary School was assigned an active role for the first time in its annual Christmas pageant. Meanwhile, our teacher had worked valiantly to teach us ``Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, lean you ear this way,'' and ``Up on the housetop reindeers pause, out jumps good old Santa Claus,'' the two songs we were scheduled to sing.
One day after we had turned in a letter-perfect rehearsal of both numbers, she left the room for a few minutes. I took over in the teacher's absence and told the class what I had discovered. The news was received with mixed emotions, but nothing happened until a few days later when we were herded onto the platform to go through our paces in the Christmas pageant.
Then, just as we were supposed to start singing, one of the more high-strung moppets in the class pointed an accusing finger at me and blubbered, ``He says there ain't any Santa Claus.'' That was immediately followed by an augmented chorus of ``He says he found his toys in a closet,'' and ``He says his daddy is the real Santa Claus!''
At that point our act dissolved into a bedlam of sobs and tantrums, and we were hustled off the stage in order that the next number by older pupils, who had long recovered from the discovery that Santa is a myth, could begin their song-and-dance routine.
Unfortunately, the episode didn't end there. By the time I reached home, my mother had been deluged with telephone calls from irate Berkley matrons accusing her of spawning a monster who had disillusioned their innocents. Later, after she had relayed their messages to my father, a part of my anatomy temporarily assumed the hue of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer's proboscis as a warning to keep my precocious discoveries to myself from then on. by CNB