In the Time of Nick : Julie Hibbard of Lake Forest Takes the Season--and Santa--Seriously
When the Hibbards went shopping for a home six years ago, one consideration was paramount.
“We wanted a fireplace,” said Julie Hibbard. “It was so important to have a chimney. We lived in two condominiums before this, and we’d always hung our Christmas stockings just on the wall. My kids thought Santa had to come through the front door.”
Hibbard takes her Christmases seriously, not that you’d ever gather that from her Santa vest, Santa soap, Santa hand towels, Santa Pez dispensers, Santa postcards, Santa place mats, napkins and napkin rings. And then there are her just plain Santas, some 250 figurines and ornaments of the jolly one in all postures and conditions, including riding an alligator. She keeps an album of photos of her two children sitting on Santa’s lap every year.
Her back yard is teeming with poinsettias. Stockings are indeed hung by the chimney with care. She keeps the radio on a satellite station that plays Christmas music 24 hours a day without commercial interruption. “Jingle Bells” is being beamed in from outer space!
The holiday programming only exists from Dec. 1 until the end of the year, but Hibbard says she’d keep it on year-round if she could. She wishes there were an all-Christmas TV station to go with it. It’s a good thing laser discs are immortal. Otherwise, she says, the family would have worn out its copies of “Miracle on 34th Street” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
“I really like Christmas,” she said. “My husband does too, which is a good thing, or he’d go crazy around here.”
Most years Hibbard, 31, and husband Michael have stayed up until midnight on Christmas Eve to leave out special gifts from Santa for their children. This is the first year that Allison, 12, and Zachary, 10, don’t believe in Santa anymore.
The tradition in their home is that the gifts “from Santa” are left out unwrapped for the kids to find when they get up on Christmas. “I asked them if we should still do that, and they said, ‘Please, Mom, let’s still pretend there’s a Santa.’ ”
Ten might seem a mite high of an age for a child to be believing in Santa Claus, but being fooled by Yule evidently runs in the family.
Hibbard proudly owned up, “I was probably in the seventh grade before I figured out that there wasn’t a Santa Claus. I went to Catholic school, and we were all a little naive. And nobody ever told me there wasn’t a Santa. My parents were so good at being Santa Claus that we never ever knew. I think it was different 25 years ago. Now, by the first grade most kids seem to have it figured out.
“I’m the oldest of five girls, and my youngest sister is 13 years younger than me, so even when I didn’t still believe myself, we kept it up for the younger family.”
When Hibbard says she believed in Santa Claus, she means it literally: the one guy visiting the whole Earth in one night on a sleigh, the reindeer, the chimney, the whole bit. She didn’t even get suspicious that there was a different Santa at every mall.
“Those were his helpers . The Santas back then at the shopping centers used to be 19-year-old guys with stick-on beards. Now they have real ones, some men who literally look like Santa Claus. So I’ve been telling my children ‘Well, the fake one is at Laguna Hills Mall, but the real one is at South Coast Plaza.’ My children are honor students, but they didn’t see through that.”
Hibbard does most of her Christmas shopping in August and September, “and I certainly don’t do one day of shopping after Dec. 1, because I just want to enjoy the holidays.” She doesn’t, however, take a break from buying Santas. Though she’s set a ceiling of not paying more than $15 for one, that’s the only limitation.
“Every year I say I’m not going to buy any more, but then I’ll go, ‘But I’ve got to have that one,’ and it starts all over again. It’s really hard to control. At least friends always know what to get me for Christmas,” she said.
Neighbors have made Santas for her out of twigs and excess lumber. Her mother makes her Santa wreaths and other items. Friends are always buying them for her, and she’s always buying them for herself. The collection now ranges from expensive collector plates--gifts--to a Santa painted on a crushed Pepsi can.
“I bought this one at Nordstrom for $15,” she said, pointing out a ceramic figurine. “Then I found its twin here at Pic ‘N’ Save for 99 cents, so I guess it wasn’t a one-of-a-kind.”
Some of the items have been handed down through her family, including a number of old Christmas-themed postcards bearing 1-cent stamps from early in the century, passed down from a great-grandmother. Hibbard said, “Her dad was a traveling salesman, and he had to be away a lot, so he always sent postcards to all of his kids.”
One thing Hibbard doesn’t do is make Santas. “I’m the most uncreative person there is,” she insists. “I don’t make anything. I arrange them, so that may be a little talent, but not much of one.”
Still, she’s not displeased with the net effect. “It can get hectic out there. But you come home and go, ‘This is what it’s all about, right here.’ Sometimes I think it’s gone overkill, but no . I love Christmas. It’s the best. It makes me happy.”
The only time when she experiences a feeling of burnout with her crimson collection is in January. “I’d love to not have to pack them up and put them away. My dream is to have a big display chest where I could just leave them out all year long and look at them,” she said.
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She has worked at a Coco’s for the past 13 years. Husband William administers a nursing care facility in Orange. It can be a stressful job, she said, so she tries to make it festive at home. Though she said he enjoys the holiday season, he doesn’t approach it with quite the verve of her side of the family.
“We put a lot of work into getting just the right present for each other and still open presents together. It’s a really special thing my family has, but my husband says it’s a little too ‘Brady Bunch’ for him.”
Hibbard said she finds that buying into the Santa story today isn’t quite the simple thing it once was.
“When our kids were born, we had friends in our church who said, ‘You shouldn’t do Santa Claus because it isn’t the true meaning of Christmas.’ They’ve told me you shouldn’t even have a Christmas tree, and they say that Halloween is Satan’s holiday. But you know what? Anything you can do to make things a little lighter, to make you happy like all this does, isn’t bad.
“Our children both know the true meaning of Christmas is Jesus’ birth, but we don’t think it takes away to also have Santa. My husband and I both thought that Santa does convey the true meaning of Christmas: the spirit of giving, the spirit of love.”
In promoting the Santa story with her kids, she admits there is a bit of deception involved.
“But I never had the fear that they’d think I’d lied to them for all these years,” she said. “I never thought that with my parents. I thought, ‘What a great thing for them to care so much to surprise us all those years.’ I can’t imagine kids growing up without that sense of mystery and excitement.”
Still, she’s found, you don’t want your kids to have to face too much disillusionment at once.
“When my daughter found out there was no Santa Claus, my husband went in and told her, ‘Now don’t tell Zachary, because he still believes. So don’t tell him Santa, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy aren’t real.
“And she goes, ‘ Ohhh , not the Tooth Fairy too?’ She’d still believed in her.”
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