Late Christmas Better Than None at All

You wouldn’t know it by the after-Christmas sales, but Friday really was the day for gift-giving.

And accordingly, when Santa pulled up at the 2nd Street Elementary School in Boyle Heights aboard a fire engine, he was technically on schedule.

Jan. 6 is by Christian tradition the day the three Magi presented the infant Jesus with the original Christmas gifts--gold, frankincense and myrrh.

But over at the Los Angeles Fire Department, there was a myrrh shortfall this season; the thousands of donated gifts that firefighters usually hand out to kids at several dozen schools and children’s homes did not materialize in time for Dec. 25.

“For a lot of them this is the only toy they do get at Christmas,” said Fire Department spokesman Gary Svider. “It’s just unfortunate we didn’t have the toys available to present by Dec. 25.”

None of that much mattered to the school kids at 2nd Street--nor to Arnie Cohen of Northridge, who first played Santa as a soldier during the Korean War when he volunteered to hand out gifts of C-rations to the kids of Guam.

This week he climbed into his Santa togs, as he has for several years past, to ride a screaming fire engine into a playground to distribute presents. “I’m not rich; I’m not poor. I’ve been lucky as far as my kids are concerned. . . . You’ve gotta give a little back.”

If the kids had quibbled about the tardy visit, Svider said, the party line was that Santa “got tied up” but “delayed his return to the North Pole” to visit them.

But nobody asked. “When they look at Santa Claus,” Cohen said, “they don’t think about that.”