Many years ago when my nephew (now in his early thirties) was a child, I did something so stupid it has attached itself to me like a permanent holiday appendage: I wrangled a Santa suit and scared him so badly, it has become the stuff of family legend. After seeing how it stunted his emotional health, I did it for several more years to my other nephews. Everyone thought it was funny. These kids took it in like sponges and now it is part of their DNA – and, unfortunatley, mine.
My sad and twisted version of Santa was honed in early 1960′s poverty and fed by visions of a Santa previously written about in these stories (see The Santa Fight). To be sure, I didn’t take the jolly red elf as far as the Jack Nicholson-ish Santa of my rural childhood, but I created a character so sickly memorable that my thirtysomething nephews now look at me in the same way I looked at the lunatic elf I grew up admiring.
Back in the day, my mother-in-law snagged a mall Santa’s outfit and I doned the gnarly beard and stomped across the roof, entered the house loudly, dragged a big bag of gifts across the floor and frightened at least an inch of future growth off of my little nephews.
The grandparents, aunts and uncles howled with laughter as the little kids stood stunned, eyes as wide as Pringles cans while I did the Santa gig like a cross between Robin Williams and Chris Rock. The yearly performances left an indelible mark on them all and they have talked about it ever since. This year, it came back to haunt me like a bad shrimp.
This Christmas my oldest nephew (the first one I freightened) has a little girl about to turn two years old. He wanted me to be Santa for her. He wanted this child to experience exactly what he had experienced twenty-seven years ago on a cold Alabama Christmas Eve in the very same home.
“You want her to know abject fear?” I asked. “Total horror? Is that what you want to foist on the poor little girl?”
“Yes!” came his reply. “It was great! The best thing in the world! No one I know has a Santa story like I have.”
“No one wants one like that,” I said.
He was not to be deterred and had already gotten my mother-in-law to again borrow a Santa suit (this time from the fire department or maybe the police department or possibly the local county jail). It came shoved in a garbage bag with a little Red Man stain on the pants. It looked like something that had been worn during a robbery or an altercation of some type. The fake boot tops were ripped and looked like a stripper’s leggings. The pants fit like Mikael Baryshnikov’s tights. The curly beard and wig smelled like sweat and pepperoni and worse. My nephew grinned. I couldn’t tell if he really wanted me to do this for his little girl or if he just wanted to see me suffer in that toxic suit. I suspect the latter.
“This is going to be great!” he stammered. “This will be the best Christmas ever!”
“For who?” I mumbled, looking at the stains on the Santa pants.
I felt like Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs, but I did it. I had to. I paid my debt. I put on the smelly Santa suit and scared the little girl senseless. Every adult in the house (most of whom had been similarly scared at her age by Uncle Terry’s Santa years ago) were more excited than if they had been handed the keys to a Porsche and told to see how fast it would go. My kids were on the floor crying with laughter. The pillow I wore under the smocky top bounced like a bad boob job. No sober person should do such a thing.
I can still see all of my nephews as I bellowed through the pines, stirred up the local dogs, pounded on the windows, dragged a giant Pooh Bear in a garbage bag, rang a pitiful little bell and stomped around the house trying to be as humorously menacing as possible. Scaring Rudy into a fit of convulsing barking, I was transformed from a raw and fearful memory to my grown nephews into a comical and impotent joke because they were on the other side of the curtain. Back then, I was Darth Vader Santa. Now I was just a skinny guy in a stinky costume spooking a Jack Russell and a little kid.
I can still see his daughter’s trembling lip and eyes as big as her dad’s were all those years ago. From the look on her face, I figure she will groin-kick some corporate Santa at a shopping center next year.
I can also still taste the nasty beard – a mixture of beer, barbecue, bourbon and Fritos – and I wonder if the sore throat I feel coming on is the beginning of the final bit of payback for turning Santa into a visage of Christmas horror for two generations of my family.
