How Santa Saved Me from Becoming a Republican

I’m not sure where my Catholic School teacher is, but I’d like to thank her for many things. I’d like to thank her for making me critical of politicians and most authority figures. I’d like to thank her for making me cynical of life in general and people in particular. I’d even like to thank her for making me cautious around homes with chimneys for fear that sparrows will drop down at any moment and burst into flames. But most importantly, I’d like to thank her for destroying my belief in Father Christmas himself, Santa Claus.

All of this happened at Catholic school the day before Christmas. If you really want to be more correct, I didn’t go to Catholic school, but to an after school Catholic “education program” known as “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.” To be honest, I had no idea that this was the real name of the program until I “Googled” while writing this. As far as most of us kids knew, the program was simply CCD, and like many things in religion, the abbreviation was never explained, leaving our mischievous 8-year-old minds to come up with our own explanation for the acronym (“Crazy Catholic Donkeys” was my favorite). For the majority of these classes we learned prayers, colored pictures of Jesus and the Apostles, or were subjected to stories of God’s love and his infinite mercy for our sinful 8-year old natures.

The day before Christmas, however, took on a particularly different tenor of joy and excitement. Because many of the people in our congregation were Mexican, many of our traditions came from Latino culture, and on Christmas Eve we celebrated the tradition known as “Las Posadas.” I’m not really sure how this event is celebrated in Mexico, but over here in the states it’s a weird tradition that resembles a cross between Christmas Caroling and begging for money. To reenact the night of Jesus’ birth two people dressed as Mary and Joseph go door to door asking for “room at the inn.” They’re repeatedly turned away and the crew following them marches from house to house until a residence representing the stable where Christ was born finally lets everyone in to get plastered at a huge party. You know, exactly like the bacchanalian orgy of the naivety two-thousand years prior (minus the kinky donkeys and cattle).

Since it would be both strange and creepy to set a group of 8-year-olds loose in a neighborhood asking to spend the night at strangers’ houses (and most of the white neighbors wouldn’t understand anyway), we just simulated “Las Posadas” by going door to door to the rooms of the Catholic school hosting the CCD classes-- kind of like an off-season trick-or-treat.

I have a feeling we were mixing traditions somewhere, but before we left to shuffle around in our dirty grey socks, we took off our shoes and left them in front of our classroom with the promise of a “special surprise” when we got back. Thus, our midget brigade led by a 4-foot tall Joseph and rather careless Virgin Mary who swung a Cabbage Patch Jesus by the leg and knocked on the doors with his face, went from classroom to classroom asking for “room at the inn” in an annoying children’s chorus. Finally, after “discovering” that we could not spend the night amid textbooks and chalk dust, we returned to our classroom to find our shoes filled with candy. Yup! Shoes filled to the tips of your tippy toes with cavity causing delights!

Pretty disgusting, but as a child you don’t think about toe jam in your Snickers Bar and if your Tootsie Pop hits the ground, you just wipe off the dirty part and keep on eating, because really, germs are only there if you can taste them. (Duh!)

While I enjoyed an “LA Gear” flavored candy cane in the back corner of the classroom, I watched our CCD instructor walk to the front of the class. A slightly plump middle aged woman with black hair encircling her head in a bowl-cut, she wore thick round glasses, and a frumpy purple dress.

“Ok now!” she clapped her hands, as she tried to pry our attention away from the taxonomy exercise of sorting and riffling through our candy.

“Eyes up here!” she shouted.

All of us quieted down, and pretended to pay attention as we carefully unwrapped our candy underneath our desks.

It was time, once again, for our annual religious parable before Christmas. Each holiday, in fact, our CCD instructor would enlighten us with one “inspiring story” that all of us made sure to immediately forget. However, the parable of my second-grade year was to be so singularly distinct, distressing, and strange that it would change my life forever—oh yes, forever.

“Ok,” my CCD instructor began. “Everyone knows that Jesus is the reason for the season,” she tapped a student’s desk both for rhetorical effect and to draw the eyes of fifteen hungry eight-year-olds who were busy unwrapping Gobstoppers and candy canes.

“But sometimes,” she glared, “we forget.”

She picked up a battered black bible and paced the room.

“You know, children. If we have faith and we pray to Jesus Christ—truly pray to him with our pure hearts and souls-- what we wish for will come true.

“Some of you may doubt this, but today I am going to tell you a story that happened not so long ago, not so far from here, with a family that was very, very poor. In fact, they barely had enough money to pay the rent on their house, which was very small, and they often struggled to buy food to eat. Certainly, didn’t have any money for candy,” she rasped this last word like a wicked witch.

We all gasped in distress. No candy? Ever? That was a dire situation indeed.

“So this family, they had a six year old son. And it was the night before Christmas and the family had just finished eating their usual meal, which was very small, consisting of only a can of beans, some limp frozen vegetables that had been thawed, and water.”

I unwrapped a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and absent-mindedly nibbled on the outer edge, saving the peanut butter inside for last.

“This family was still hungry when they finished,” my instructor continued, but that was all they had. But no one ever complained, and together they did the dishes and then all gathered around the fire in their living room. It was there that their son asked them a question. He looked up at them and asked them if he had been very good that year.

“‘Of course,’ they said. He was a very good boy and he always did what he was told.

“’Then Santa Claus will bring me presents!’ the boy smiled and pointed to his single stocking hanging on the fireplace, pulling down his list for Santa he had taped up.

“’Look,’ he excitedly showed his mom and dad. ‘That means that Santa will bring me a pet! I wrote it right here!’”

I nodded, happily licking into the bottom edge of a candy cane. That sounded about right to me.

“But his parents were very sad,” my teacher continued. “They told their child that Santa was very busy and couldn’t get to every house and explained that sometimes even good children didn’t get presents.”

Hearing this I was completely puzzled. Perhaps I was just a strange or immature child, but in the second grade, but I definitely still believed in Jolly Saint Nick. Why then, wouldn’t Santa give this little boy presents? Maybe he had done something really bad, I thought. Like pulled some girl’s hair, or threw sand in the sandbox. Something he hadn’t told his parents.

“But,” said my teacher, “the little boy didn’t listen to his parents, and instead went to bed happily singing how Santa would bring him gifts.”

“Alone together long after the boy had left, his parents sat by the fire discussing things. ‘What are we going to do they asked each other? What can we do? Santa isn’t going to come.’”

Here my teacher stopped pacing and stood squarely facing the class.

“And we all know why Santa wasn’t coming, right? Because there is no Santa Claus. Your parents are Santa Claus.”

The candy cane almost dropped from my mouth.

I repeated what she had just said in my mind.

“There is no Santa Claus.”

“Your parents are Santa Claus.”

I felt a cold wet lump forming in my stomach and I looked around the room to see the other children’s reactions. A few were nodding but the rest were still lazily eating as if our teacher had said simple and obvious, like “rocks are heavy.”

Alone in the back of the room I stifled a sob. Soon however, a cold dark feeling in my chest welled into a quick stifling contraction, and I covered my face holding back the burning tears gathering at the corners of my eyes.

I was completely destroyed at this point—what my instructor had just said sent a seismic crack down the foundations of my world and everything else passed before my senses in a roiling blur.

However, like individuals in so many traumatic situations, some strange part of my subconscious turned on like the black box found in the rubble of airline crashes. It must have, because although I remember the rest of my teachers story, if not precisely, extremely well, at the time it was all I could do to try to hold myself together. Because of this, almost all of the following reactions to my teacher's story came entirely in retrospect.

“So, no Santa Claus. No Santa Claus at all,” my teacher echoed. “What were they to do? They knew that Santa Claus wouldn’t be coming, but what could they do? They were poor.” Here she gave a conspirational smile that just seemed sadistic to me. “Late, late into the night the parents continued to talk and talk to each other. Finally deciding that there was nothing they could do. ‘It was time to go to bed,’ they said, hanging their heads. However, right before they put their fire out, they stopped and said a prayer to Jesus Christ our Lord.

“’Please,’ they lifted their heads to heaven, ‘we are very poor and don’t have any money to buy our son a present for Christmas. He believes that Santa will bring him a pet for Christmas, but in reality we have nothing for him. Please our Lord Jesus, if you are listening, we pray to you with all our hearts to help us provide our son with a Merry Christmas on this, the day of your birth.”

“Then, with heavy hearts they put out their fire and went to sleep.

“At about this time as the smoke and ashes from the coals in their fireplace were floating up the chimney. They went up into the night, high into the air above the house.

“And you know what? At exactly this time a little baby sparrow was flying through the air over their house. He flew over the chimney, and as he flew he was overcome with the smoke and ash and dropped straight down the chimney.

“And you know where the little sparrow fell into.”

Here the natural, logical response is the burning coals of the fire where he died a terrible fiery death. Because really, that’s what would have happened. But no, Jesus would never allow that.

“Do all of you know where that little sparrow fell?” my teacher repeated for emphasis.

Everyone (except me) shook their heads.

“That little baby sparrow, that treasure of God, fell straight into that little boy’s stocking!”

Ok, wow. This truly is a miracle, because unless the family hung their stockings inside the fireplace or the little sparrow, with smoke scorching and burning the alveoli in his lungs fell downward, almost hit the coals, pulled up like a jet in Top Gun, did a U-turn and flew into the stocking, I have no freaking idea how this could happen.

“You see!” my teacher exclaimed. “You see! A miracle happened that very day! This poor little boy received the pet that he had wanted all along just by his parents praying and believing in Jesus Christ.

“So the moral of this story is that if you truly believe in Jesus Christ and pray to him with all your heart, your prayers will be answered.

“Got it? Now remember that as we celebrate the birth of our Lord.”

There was a high copper clanging of the schools bells.

“Class dismissed”

As I collected that candy wrappers of Christmas treasures I had eaten before my teacher’s revelation about Father Christmas, I ran from the class, traveling through the desperation of hopeless confusion. I hardly remember walking to the parking lot. I was in a daze, trying with all my might to suppress my tears as I made my way to my mother’s car. For a while I was silent, but then I couldn’t hold it anymore and I told her what had happened. She listened with a furrow of concern creasing her forehead, looking occasionally at my tiny seat-buckled form.

“But,” I said, “That isn’t true. Santa Claus exists…right?”

My mother said nothing, and simply pursed her lips and stared at the road. She didn’t have to say anything then. I knew—there was nothing more to say. The dam broke and hot tears flowed down my cheeks. I couldn’t have been more depressed if I had suddenly found out that my parent’s had adopted me. Or turned out to be aliens. After all I actually believed these things and they were a part of my reality. A wrecking ball went through my mind as my tiny world came tumbling down. Like an assassin sneaking through the dark alleys and convolutions of my mind, the holiday spirits of my childhood were shot dead one by one.

“The Easter Bunny…” I wiped tears from my eyes.

Once again my mother said nothing, and sniper of reality took down another victim.

“And the Tooth Fairy.”

“…”

A shot to the head.

“What is real?”

“Some things are just…in your heart…” my mother touched my arm.

I pulled away quickly. In confused mess of tears, snot, and anger, I wiped my nose with my open palm and rested my head against the window.

************************************************************

The next day I heard that my mother had paid the CCD teacher a very, very angry visit. I can only imagine because even today now my mother can be a very frightening person in an angry argument. I wasn’t around but I was later informed that the CCD teacher had told my mother that she was only doing “God’s work” and telling us the story to increase our “faith in Him.” I just hope they were in a soundproof room when my mother had a chance to respond.

As for me, I was depressed for weeks. While I considered the deception of these fictional characters that I had thought were real enough to touch, my eight-year-old mind expanded the scope of its doubt and inquiry.

If I had believed in such things without question, and they had turned out to be false, what other things in the world were lies? How many lies were my teachers telling me? How many lies did the world believe and propagate?

Following this line of reasoning it was a single hop, skip, and jump to doubting God Himself. After all, didn’t I have my illusions shattered during a parable meant to make me believe in another “mysterious” being?

Was God a fraud like Santa Claus? Such a big lie that even adults were taken in? Were there teachers teaching the CCD instructors who actually knew a grander or more dismal nihilistic truth of the world? Ironically through this story I became doubtful of the very God they meant to increase my faith in.

I eventually got over the most radical doubt and settled into a happily jaded middle ground of agnosticism. However, I have to say that this was the start of a more critical evaluation of teachers, pundits, politicians, books, newspapers—almost everything.

In a way I’m actually grateful to my CCD teacher. If she hadn’t disillusioned me in such a profound manner, I might have unquestioned faith in the exact written word of the Bible, believe that racial bias is a thing of the past, think that people are only poor because they don’t work hard, think that socialism is an absolute evil, and believe uncritically that American international policy truly is the best thing since sliced bread—in short I might have been a Republican!

After hearing this story people often ask me if I would ever perpetuate the myth of Santa Claus with my own children.

“Absolutely,” I tell them.

“But,” some people point out cynically. “Wouldn’t you be training your own children to believe unequivocally in a lie? A lie that you, yourself, found so distasteful?”

“No,” I always tell them, “because I would also enroll them in CCD.”

-Mark Jordan