OLEAN -- The newspapers and family magazines are full of not only Yuletide nostalgia stories, but pleas for advice from worried parents who fret over how to keep their rapidly maturing children believing in Santa Claus. I have no doubt it's a problem these days.
Subjected to the round-the-clock saturation of totally frank information from computer and TV screens, the average 8-year-old in this brave new millennium is probably as sophisticated and skeptical about worldly things as I was at the age of, oh say, 27.
These concerned parents might want to consider the bait-and-switch ploy my loving mother and father used to fashion. I imagine they might have called it something like Park the Little Dummy Somewhere Else.
As I was growing up in the incredibly innocent 1950s, it was the custom in my Catholic family to attend Midnight Mass in our snowy little village of 900 souls near the Canadian border. Custom, heck -- it was stone-tablet law handed down by my mother. Not that my two older brothers and I didn't like it.
In our tiny Church of the Immaculate Conception (it seemed as huge as a basilica then), the celebration of Christ's birth was always attended by scores of my parents' smiling friends -- and their kids, my pals -- all in finest raiment.
The choir, in which my mother participated, was way above average, and the Mass in those days was said in this spooky Latin which we little kids hoped to learn, too, so we could be altar boys. (Years later, when I was a veteran acolyte, I gained a measure of fame and approbation in that congregation by helping catch some flying wine and water cruets set loose when an absent-minded monsignor inadvertently kicked over the little vessel stand used on festive occasions. It was quite an athletic feat, if I do say so.) Most of the hymns were in Latin, too.
Anyway, once we strode out of church to the strains of "Angels We Have Heard on High," congratulated ourselves on our abundant good will and piety, and dusted off the three new inches of snow on the trusty Oldsmobile, it was off to the Foleys'. These were the close friends of my parents, and roughly the same age -- a witty and smart new car dealer, his two sisters, and the husband of one of them. These four adults -- no kids involved -- all lived in one great big house up the hill on the same street as the church, three houses down and across the way from my widowed paternal grandfather.
They were pleasant and kindly folks, enjoyed children in limited measure, and always put on a nice feed after Midnight Mass. (They often shared in Christmas Day dinner, too. It shifted back and forth from their house to ours on alternate years, and featured either a mammoth ham or a mammoth turkey on the same schedule.)
My grandfather would attend the post-Mass gathering, too. He was the town assessor, the true patriarch of the family, and proud owner of one of the first television sets in town. I desperately wished we could go to his house, where I might be able to sneak it on. But instead he would describe the shows he had seen that week as we all sat enraptured. They were all in black-and-white, but his descriptions made them come alive with color.
During these soft, warm evenings of half a century ago, being the only kid present, my contribution to the conversation was usually to ask my wise old grandfather if he thought I'd been good enough during the year to attract a favorable visit from Santa. He'd mumble something vaguely optimistic, but my mother, as if on cue, would roll her eyes and start talking about lumps of coal.
The Foley house was expansive but well-heated, unlike our drafty coal-fired dwelling, and reliably featured a handsomely decorated Christmas tree, plenty of cookies and candy set about, and sometimes a card game if the gentlemen were still wide awake.
My two big brothers, Jim and Bill, were in their mid-to-late teens at the time, and would always depart at this stage of the festivities with wide grins on their faces. I would ask where they were going, and could I go, too.
My mother would explain they wanted to be alone because they were taking the Oldsmobile to visit their respective girlfriends and give them their presents -- which struck me as passing strange because the usual mantra was they spent too much time with their girlfriends anyway. Plus, my father usually resisted loaning either one of them the sole family car (only rich people had two) and yet on this important night he'd always be smiling broadly as they drove off.
OK, so I was a sap, but I always bought this lame explanation without a peep out of my mouth. (To this day, neither Jim nor Bill can figure out how I managed to make my living in later years as an investigative reporter.)
About 40 minutes later, my brothers would come back with mission-accomplished looks on their faces and assure the smiling adults their gift-giving had pleased their sweeties. This puzzled me, too. They NEVER came back from dates when they said they would. With the return of my brothers, my parents would break into exaggerated yawns, make their excuses, and the five of us would troop out into the softly falling snow and motor home, about a mile away.
Once there, inevitably, a miracle had occurred. Santa Claus HAD visited our chilly house. Mirabile dictu. He'd forgotten about that lamp I broke, or the fake spider I put in Mary Sue Martin's desk, or the rock I threw at Hammy Gowing's dog when it threatened mine.
My usual wish to Santa -- to grow out of my shrimp stature and become tall like my brothers -- was never answered. But the stockings -- hung over the living room archway in lieu of a fireplace -- were bulging with candy bars and oranges (hard to get in those days during the northern winter), a new pen and pencil, and sometimes a toy soldier.
I was allowed to empty my stocking, but Santa's gifts, always wrapped, would have to wait until morning -- by now only a few hours away. Sometimes, I would be allowed to open just one, my mother picking. It was usually a new shirt.
My brothers would stand around elbowing each other and exchanging winks and knowing glances with my father. As I drifted off to sleep, the only cynical thought in my head was wondering how old Santa always knew we were going to the Foleys'.
Incipient sleuth though I was, I never did uncover this elaborate fraternal ruse on my own.
A savvy classmate finally tipped me that his older brothers were doing the same thing, and he had blown their little charade wide apart by sneaking home from his Midnight Mass party unnoticed. By that time, I wasn't devastated by the news -- just a little sad and selfish, realizing a big part of childhood had passed on, I was still four-foot-nine, weighed about 80 pounds soaking wet, and the cornucopia of gifts had vanished. What good did knowledge do me?
To this day, my brothers won't admit their part in this vast conspiracy -- even when I claim residual psychological damage. Neither will my youngest son's two older brothers when he makes the same accusation of them.
My mother and father have both been dead for almost a quarter-century now, but I can still hear them talking softly in the front seat of the Oldsmobile as we drove home on those clear and frosty December nights in northern New York -- deliberately just loud enough for my straining ears to hear. They'd be asking each other if it was likely Santa Claus had come -- as if they were kids themselves. It felt warm sitting between my brothers.
Lord, I was such a lucky little boy.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 23 2003 |