Getting Into the Spirit, Kicking and Screaming

Every year I try to avoid being swept up in the spirit of the Christmas season, but it’s a losing battle.

Why should I resent it? Maybe because I feel like a sucker being hooked by commercial lures.

On the day after Christmas, houses all over the city are still decorated with festive lights. Through the 25th, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or some equally banal Christmas song blares into the street from stores and cars. Then, just when you are about fed up with it, you hear some lovely soprano voice singing “Adeste Fideles” or some other Christmas hymn and find yourself humming along.

I half know the words to most carols because I sang them in Sunday school as a boy. They are indeed beautiful and they never get old.

Of course everybody beyond the age of 8 knows there isn’t any Santa Claus. The old blowhard is a myth that parents routinely thrust on their children.

Even an 8-year-old can readily see the logistics are impossible. How could the old gentleman visit millions of homes in one night, delivering toys for the children of every household by climbing down the chimneys?

Can’t you just see the fat old fellow climbing down a chimney with his bag of presents? He’d get stuck in the very first one and the family would have to call 911 and tell them, “Santa’s stuck in our chimney.” Multiply that by several million and you’ll see the picture.

Then there’s the matter of that sled. How could a sled manage the macadam streets of Los Angeles? Not even the most modern machines, including helicopters, could get the job done.

Of course everybody has heard of that airhead New York Sun editorial writer who answered a little girl’s question “Is there a Santa Claus?” with the maudlin reassurance, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

That is probably the best remembered and often quoted of editorials. As an old rewrite man, I know it was just an idle staffer doodling on his typewriter.

But the spirit is pervasive. It gets to you sooner or later. My wife and I went to a Christmas party before the holiday at the Pasadena home of Mireya and Larry Jones.

It’s an annual event, and we have gone for several years. When we walked in, the house was bursting with Christmas carols. Everybody was singing, loudly. A pianist was pounding out the beat, accompanied by several other professionals on assorted instruments including the violin, a trombone, saxophone and cello.

They sang with enthusiasm, reading the words from booklets: “It came upon a midnight clear.” . . . “Deck the halls with boughs of holly” . . . and “Silent night, holy night.” Is there anyone who doesn’t know the words to “Silent Night”?

Then they went into “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” that charming round in which designated groups of singers sing the name of one of the 12 gifts--two turtledoves, three French hens, four calling birds and five golden rings. After each gift is named the group sings “and a partridge in a pear tree.’

Allen Mathies, a man of great voice, sang “five golden rings” for each round, slowing the tempo and bringing it out loud and clear. This feat invariably brought applause.

The first time I ever heard “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was when our younger son was about 9 years old. He sang it, verse by verse, as he stood in front of the fireplace at a neighbor’s house. It was charming.

At the Joneses’ house, we all sang “Silent Night,” which is better known to most of us than “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

I won’t say I believe in that old fraud Santa Claus, any more than I believe in heaven, but after the last “sleep in heavenly peace” I was drugged again--thoroughly immersed in the Christmas spirit.

I knew I’d be looking in my stocking to see if old St. Nick remembered me again.

We used to be told that Santa kept a list of every child’s behavior during the year before Christmas, and left them gifts according to their virtue.

I’ll say this. I’ve never had a more virtuous year. Who knows, maybe I’ll even go to heaven.

* Jack Smith’s column is published Mondays.