Parents’ Beliefs About Santa Deserve Respect

I’m convinced now that I did the humane thing by not telling my mother and father after I discovered that the Santa Claus upon whom I was riding “horseyback” wore a false beard.

I think I was about 6 then, or at least I was old enough to have my feet touch the floor after I climbed on poor Santa’s back.

I distinctly remember that beard and mustache. It was attached to a wire. It was a terrible discovery. I felt so awful about it that I didn’t tell my parents about my tumble from belief. Besides, they seemed to be enjoying the Santa myth so thoroughly that I was afraid they might be hurt by my confession.

So, you may ask, what was I doing riding horseyback on Santa Claus? Well, my grandfather owned a department store and he had its Santa Claus come to the house on Christmas Eve to distribute the family’s gifts. We would wait for Santa in the living room that had French doors at one end leading to a patio. Soon we would hear stompings and sleigh bells outside and then Santa would burst through the doors. It was great theater. It was traditional for Santa to give my little brother, my cousins and me horseyback rides about the living room floor.

Santa was an Englishman, with a fine red face the year-round. And he was portly. He made a great Santa, costumed in crimson and white. The rest of the year I knew him as the store’s janitor.

Curiously, I never made the connection between his Santa and janitor roles until after that fateful Christmas Eve so many years ago. After that I began to put things together. My first major clue was how remarkably alike Santa and the janitor talked and sounded.

Little did I imagine that nearly 60 years later my very own son, at age 40, would make a similar confession to me about Santa Claus. Only this time I had been Santa Claus.

I had been working as news director of a radio station in Mount Vernon, Wash. Several weeks before Christmas I would do a 30-minute program “broadcast from the North Pole” on which I played Santa Claus. In my best phony, hearty Santa Claus voice, I read and answered letters to Santa from the children of Skagit County. My son and his sisters were among the letter writers.

I was certain my children were believers to the core. I believed that I strengthened their belief by recording my Santa program. On my days off from the radio station, I’d listen to the radio at home with my kids. It never occurred to me that they thought it was rather odd that Daddy, who never cared for children’s programs, would listen to Santa with such rapt attention and approval.

My son confessed to me just this last Thanksgiving that I had overplayed my Santa role so atrociously that after its first week on the air he began to suspect that I had a hammy hand in it someplace. He told me I disclosed my true identity on a late Christmas Eve when I brought home with me the sleigh bells I used on the air, and, assuming my most jolly Santa voice, stood in the backyard stomping and yelling lustily at my imaginary reindeer.

I thought I was well hidden behind a tree. But son Tom says he got out of bed and could make me out as the impostor I was from his window. He said his older sister, Wendy, saw me, too, but they never told the younger ones. He thinks they were true believers until the first grade, when some nasty little iconoclasts at school wised them up.

Tom said he and Wendy never told me they were privy to my masquerade because I was having so much fun at it. Besides, he said, they were a little afraid I might get mad at them and they wouldn’t get as many presents.

It’s funny, that was more than 30 years ago, and when he told me this last month I felt a little miffed. A bright memory was tarnished. Alas, during all those years I believed I really had them fooled.

Both of my parents are gone now, but were they alive today I don’t think I’d tell them about that wire around Santa’s chin of 60 years ago. There are some pleasant illusions that are best preserved for the older folks.