In This Small Town, There Really Is a Santa

Every year on Christmas Eve, my children sit down cross-legged in front of the Christmas tree and write their letters to Santa Claus. Traditionally, their messages have been brief and to the point--here’s the cookies and milk, give the reindeer the carrots, and thanks so much for stopping by.

But as they have grown, my son and my daughter have penned longer and more emotionally complex letters--letters that include such defiant declarations as “I don’t care what my friend’s Dad says--I know you are real!” Or this recent, achingly desperate affirmation of faith: “I love you, Santa, and I believe in you. I will always, always believe in you. I mean it. No matter what. Forever.”

In the quaint little village of Cedarburg, Wis., I have to assume that everybody in town believes in Santa Claus no matter what and forever because of the extraordinary care with which his many helpers--from the Chamber of Commerce president to Mrs. Claus herself--protect Santa’s special magic.

Bob Litak was a young attorney starting up his own firm in the Currier-and-Ives burg just outside Milwaukee when one of the town fathers approached him to substitute for an ailing Santa at the community’s annual Yuletide festival.

Reluctantly, Litak agreed, expecting the role to be a one-season gig. But when he arrived at the large room off the community center gymnasium, he was as enchanted as any child.

“It looked like the living room of Santa’s home at the North Pole,” Litak marveled. There was a Christmas tree with presents, walls lined with reindeer harnesses--each with its own brass name tag, a pot-bellied stove, a fireplace mantel covered with letters to Santa and a big throne-like chair for Santa to sit in and greet his young visitors.

“It was into this setting that I naively walked, never realizing the changes it would have on my heart and soul. . . ,” Litak begins his book, “Reflections of a Small Town Santa” (Blue Sky Marketing, 1998). As he recounts his annual Santa portrayals--one chapter for each of his 12 years on the throne--Litak reveals his own gradual transformation from stressed-out attorney to beneficent Father Christmas.

“I had been emotionally kidnapped,” writes Litak in explaining why he not only agreed to undertake the role again and again, but also began to spend hours of his free time polishing Santa’s image with such details as fur-trimmed boots, new white gloves and a pricey red and white hat.

As Litak relates the quiet adventures of each successive season, he shares with readers a code of behavior for anyone who would be so bold as to stand in for Claus himself. The most important rule: “Santa never promises anything.”

“Santa has to be absolutely faithful to his image. To make a promise to a child that might not be kept would destroy his reality,” Litak writes. “And because Santa’s the one person [children] trust completely, and to whom they commit their precious belief in the magic and mystery of the season . . . I learned to respond to each child’s request, not with a promise to fulfill it, but to provide hope that it would be answered in some way.”

The ways in which the children of Cedarburg’s hopes and dreams are fulfilled are as varied as their wishes. In the space of just 80 pages, Litak resurrects his and his readers’ ability to believe once more in the true spirit of Santa Claus.

As Litak reminds us, “Santa can’t afford to allow any acceleration in the surrender of childhood innocence. Neither can the world.”

This year, I’ll be writing my own letter to Santa.

For more reviews, see Sunday Book Review:

This week: Jonathan Levi on the Jews and Jonathan Kirsch on the invention of the Bible and the Talmud.