Still believing in that Christmas magic

The holiday traffic hurries down the boulevard like bubbles through a champagne glass. The light posts are wrapped in red bows, apparently to signal that danger is afoot. Or that Heidi Fleiss is opening another store. This is no place for children. No place to be searching for the essence of Christmas.

“Why,” asks the little girl, “does Santa Claus say he’s real when everyone knows he’s not?”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s fake,” she says. “And everybody knows it.”

We are fortunate, I’ve always thought, to live in one of those well-fluffed Los Angeles suburbs where the children believe in Santa till the 10th or 11th grade, often longer, depending on what type of car they receive on their 16th Christmas. The real lucky ones, the fortunate few who receive cars above a certain price range, often go on believing in Santa forever.

It’s the sort of holiday largess the little girl is unlikely to ever experience. Already, she senses this void.

“When did you become such a cynic about Santa?” I ask her.

“What’s a cynic?”

“A distrustful person,” I say.

Santa’s had a hard life, I tell her. He’s been exploited by Hollywood, wet upon by infants (much the same process) and hit hard by mounting health-care costs. Amid all this, he’s stayed married to the same woman for a thousand years. Which is never easy. Especially in this town.

So give Santa a break, I tell her.

“There needs to be a little Santa in all of us,” I say.

“There does?”

“Those Santas you see on every corner,” I say, “they’re really just big, bumbling marketing tools.”

“See, I told you,” she says, satisfied she’s won the first important philosophical argument of her young life.

Tough holiday, Christmas.

WE BRING home a tree. It stands, like me, just over 5 feet 7, with possible bark-beetle infestation -- like me -- and a greenish tint that bespeaks either money or the early stages of the flu.

“It looks sick,” the wife says.

“What do you expect for 95 bucks?”

“A Christmas tree?”

“Dream on, lady.”

I bring up the boxes of decorations from the basement, wipe the frosting of cobwebs and dust from their tops, then plop them down near the fireplace, at which point she insists there’s one box missing. Been doing Christmas this way a long time. At least a thousand years.

“There’s got to be another box,” my wife says.

“You’re probably right,” I always say.

“No, wait, here it is,” she always answers.

“Oh, OK,” I say, pretending to be surprised.

It takes us, roughly, two days to decorate the tree. My wife turns each ornament around in her hands several times, like Roger Clemens preparing to hurl a fastball. On the homemade ones, the ones with little pictures of the kids from first grade, she takes even longer.

“Remember this one?” she asks.

“No.”

“It’s from when she was in kindergarten,” she says.

“Oh,” I say, pretending I didn’t know.

In the meantime, I string the lights, following a linear, zigzag pattern along the branches. By stringing the lights along the line of the branches, I achieve a more natural, three-dimensional quality. Fortunately, it’s a fresh tree, warm to the touch. Soft as a well-sweatered date.

“Dad’s putting the lights up all wrong,” someone says.

“Just wrap them around, like a skirt,” my wife says.

“Trust me, this is better,” I explain.

“Do we need more lights?” she asks, studying it as if it were a Renoir. “I think we need more lights.”

I run to the Rite Aid, where I see three people we know. If it weren’t for impromptu trips to the drugstore, I would have no social life at all. From one, I get a kiss.

“Oh, is this the line for kisses?” an old guy asks, a sparkle in his eye.

“Yeah, come here,” I say.

Back home, I add 100 more little white lights to a tree that is already glowing with lights.

“That looks 100% better,” my wife says.

“It really does,” says the little girl.

I stand back and study the tree. It looks no different from before I put up the 100 new lights. But for $5.99, I made it “100% better.”

Easy holiday, Christmas.

On THE FLOOR later, the baby crawls over and wraps himself around my neck like a warm scarf. As he clings to me, I study the paper.

“Unwrap a Jaguar,” one ad offers.

“No interest till 2007,” says another.

If only Christmas were that simple.

“We’ve been counting every penny,” a dad confides at a soccer game.

“You have pennies?” I say.

“Our Visa bill was $1,800,” he says.

“Ouch,” I say.

So we do what we can do, the dads and moms of Christmas. We shop the early sales. We skimp on our own gifts. We try to survive Christmas and keep the essence of the holiday alive amid an almost pathological quest for cars and plasma TVs. Nothing against rampant commercialism, mind you. It just doesn’t quite fit into our budget.

“To you, what’s the best thing about Christmas?” the little girl asks.

“Why?”

“I’m doing a paper,” she says. “What do you like about Christmas, Dad?”

“Um, I like you,” I tell her.

“Me?” she asks.

“You,” I tell the little girl.

“OK,” she says with a shrug, “if that’s the best you can do.”

Merry Christmas.

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Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.