As a little boy born with a logical mind, the reality of a fat, bearded Santa Claus didn't make any sense to me. You mean to tell me some dude is flying around on a sleigh with some reindeer, landing on the roofs of houses, then climbing down a chimney to place gifts under a pagan Christmas tree?
Something wasn't adding up.
As I peppered my mom with questions, God love her, she gamely tried to keep the facade up while I was busy using my analytical mind tearing it down. At the time, our city had a population of just over 100,000 people. So paper in hand, I start calculating the average family size, and how many homes he'd have to visit for complete coverage of this area.
Realizing we were looking at tens of thousands of homes, I guesstimated that it would take him a minimum of 15 minutes to target a house, land on the roof, shimmy down the chimney carrying his bag of gifts, place them around the tree, and then reverse the operation to get ready to hit the next home.
All without being seen...
I wasn't buying it for a minute.
I kept questioning mom:
Wouldn't his Santa costume be filthy after the first few houses?
What happens to homes that don't have a chimney? We didn't have one, so how's he getting in here?
Slightly exasperated, she replied that Santa has a key to every home. So I shot back "Then why does he need to come down a chimney?
Why a bright red costume? Isn't he trying to SNEAK into homes? An all-black design would make much more sense, right?
You see where this conversation was going, right? :)
This is what happens when you give birth to a kid that's a little too curious about EVERYTHING.
I imagined Santa waking up a homeowner out in the boondocks and being shot as an intruder. You know how those anti-government types can get. And what if a couple were having a 1AM Christmas-morning quickie on the futon? Does he just focus on the job at hand, or say "fuck it" and join in? One can just imagine.
We lived in a dangerous neighborhood at the time where people would put razors into apples on Halloween, (I should know, because mom found some one year, and forbid us from accepting any apples after that). So I'm thinking that if he shows up in this area with a giant bag full of gifts, he's getting robbed for sure! lol!
I must have been 7 or 8, and figuring the gift drop-offs occurred between midnight and 6AM, he had 6 hours to hit something like 20,000 homes just to cover my city alone.
And he's doing this all around the world?
No fucking way.
We had a tradition of leaving out milk and cookies for Santa, and every Christmas morning, we were astonished that a bite was taken out of the cookie, and some of the milk was gone.
So I got together with my older sister to set a trap for this dude. I rigged some string to make a noise if anyone entered the living room in order to approach the all-aluminum tree (nobody has LIVE trees in the inner city, so give me a break). :)
We stayed awake in our beds, and at 2AM, we heard the tinkle of the little alarm bell...
As we peeked through a slit in our bedroom door, our eyes filled with wonder, we saw the familiar silhouette of Old Saint Nick, dropping off presents under the tree.
I kid you not...
Then, once he was done, almost as an afterthought, he tiptoed over to the table and took a dainty bite of the cookie, and a sip of milk.
Turning to leave, I swear, he looked dead at us and winked, almost as if to say "is this real enough for you?" before exiting the premises.
Hearts filled with joy, we went back to bed, and woke up excitedly telling everyone that we'd actually seen Santa Claus, and that he was very real indeed!
We had a magical Christmas that day, and years later, I asked mom if she'd engineered the entire thing, but she would only smile and say: "The magic of Christmas is real." Truer words were never spoken, and I wish you a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year!