With a Child’s Heart

The other day I was thinking about when I found out that Santa was not real. I grew up in the 50s/60s and back then, Santa was a big deal. I was always confused about how exactly that Santa Claus thing really worked. Every year my mother would take my sister and me (this was before my brother came along) to “the real Macy’s” (which of course is on 34th street in Manhattan) and there we would meet up with “the real Santa”. I always thought he was creepy looking, but I thought if I didn’t tell him what I wanted then I wouldn’t get anything. Not only that, I also couldn’t figure out just how he would fit in the chimney of the project building I lived in. Did he even know how to get to Brooklyn? Did he know which projects I lived in; after all there are a lot of projects in Brooklyn. If he found my building, how would he know what apartment to go to? In my mind he could wind up in some random apartment and deliver my things to some “naughty” child instead of me. Everything about him was suspect as far as I was concerned; nevertheless, since I was a pretty obedient child, I made sure to be extra nice around Christmas time since that was part of the deal. That time period between thanksgiving and Christmas “the Christmas Season” lasted much too long for me; it seemed like years. We would spend a lot of time window shopping. My mother particularly loved to see how the department stores would decorate for Christmas.  There was always music in the air and the Salvation Army volunteers would stand outside ringing their bells and collecting donations for the less fortunate. Although I’m sure we fit into that “less fortunate” category, I never knew we weren’t “well-off”. We were always well dressed, neat and clean. We always had a well-balanced meal and real milk to drink at every meal. We would even have snacks – popcorn that my mother popped on the stove and homemade ice-cream that she would churn by hand. Every Sunday we could anticipate cake – vanilla with chocolate frosting, my favorite! There was always so much excitement around Christmas and there was always that hope that it would indeed be a “white Christmas”.  As tradition would have it, my dad would always get us a real tree. That was his main contribution to Christmas. On Christmas eve we would spend time decorating the tree. We loved putting on all the special ornaments that we had collected over the years. I particularly liked putting on the candy canes and at the completion of decorating we could throw silver tinsel on the tree. I loved the smell of the real tree which added to the ambiance – After all, it was Christmas time!!  My mother would spend hours cooking and baking. The house always smelled of cake and pie. There was a channel on the TV (WPIX – Channel 11) that displayed a burning log in a fireplace so we could pretend that we had a real fireplace. The channel would play Christmas music continuously all night. It actually wasn’t all night, but in my child-like mind it was all night. I recently looked it up and according to sources, the music played for 4 hours continuously with no commercials.  We would turn off all the lights except for the Christmas tree lights and the burning log on the TV which created a magical atmosphere. The lights, the music, all of us together – for at least one night we were “the perfect family”. My sister and I would try to stay up as late as possible just so we could see when Santa came.  

Since I’m a real music person, I enjoyed all the Christmas carols and winter-related songs like, “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”. It’s Beginning to Look A lot Like Christmas”, “Frosty the Snowman”,” Winter Wonderland”. One of my all-time favorites was “Silver Bells”. At church we sang “Silent Night”, “Oh Come all ye Faithful”, “Joy to the World”, “The First Noel”, just to name a few.  I knew all the words to every song. There was however, one song that really bothered me. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”.  I could never figure out why mommy would be kissing Santa Claus and why daddy wouldn’t have something to say about that. I kept thinking…. what if daddy saw her kissing him? According to the lyrics it says “Oh what a laugh it would have been if daddy had only seen mommy kissing Santa Claus last night” – WHAT!!! There would be no laughing at my house. What a big fight that would be. I was so worried that I could never fall asleep right away. I couldn’t understand why nobody was upset about that but me. I wanted someone to tell me why on earth mommy would want to kiss that old fat white man when daddy was much more handsome!  I even thought maybe this was daddy’s payback for “sneaking around on mommy”. (I had overheard stories my mother would tell her best friend about daddy getting all dressed up and going out without her). I always hated those nights but at least at Christmastime things seemed to be ok for them. Now with “Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” that would end the peace forever!!!!!!

I was determined to get to the bottom of this mommy kissing Santa business. After some investigating, I found out that DADDY was “Santa”. That ended my fantasy about Santa Claus but I didn’t mind at all. It made my life so much more bearable knowing that mommy wasn’t cheating on daddy after all.

 “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright….sleep in heavenly peace!!”