Santa Claus

Being Santa is not easy.

I've only had the opportunity to don the Santa suit once in my life. I was not prepared for it: physically, mentally or emotionally. All my experiences of Santa occurred in a mall when I was younger. Usually, Santa was sitting in the center of the shopping area. Situated on a throne, usually red, surrounded by bored looking teenagers dressed up in elf costumes, Santa was probably the premier draw for the synagogue of capitalism. Scores of kids would line up for the privilege to sit on the lap of this jolly, obese, octogenarian to ask him to lend his ear to the whimsy of children. For some reason, Santa's throne was always cordoned off with a rope as if families would rush the throne, trampling each other for Santa's boon. I never understood the power of the rope: it's not like kids couldn't just stoop under it (or, for the vertically challenged, walk under it) - but for some reason, that golden cord held the kids at bay whispering animatedly to each other about all the presents that Santa was going to bring them. You could watch them checking their lists - if another kid had a good idea, the child would pull on the sleeve of their impatient parent and ask for a pen to add that special doll or toy to the list. (I'm not even sure if kids ask for dolls or toys anymore. It seems as if they are all asking for technical gadgets or movies?)

So, the elves would carefully take each young boy or girl to the seat of honor - the ever diminishing lap of the red-suited genie. I'm sure that some kids enjoyed the experience, but I don't know if I ever saw one. Most of them were frightened of the outlandishly large beard which obscured the Santa's face ("Does Santa have a mouth?" I heard one child ask) The child was placed on the lap of Santa who almost always had a bit of halitosis. The prerequisite "Ho, Ho, Ho, what would you like for Christmas little..." He would look at the parent who would whisper the child's name "Janie." The child would start to understand that perhaps, just perhaps, this wasn't the same man that lived at the north pole because he knew every child's name - even identical twins, in my case. The child would then rattle off an enormously large list of Christmas gifts that Santa was to pack in his enormously undersized sleigh. The list brought to Santa realistically was a list for the parents who really wanted to know what their children wanted.

Then, after list was spewed out, Santa would inevitably pat the child on the back, promising all sorts of things that no human could keep, and attempt to send the child on her way. Invariably, the child would want to add a few more things to Santa's ear who then would have to employ the slaves, er... the elves as bouncers sending them away from the throne in tears.

It's a tough thing to be Santa.

So, as I began telling a bit before, my connection of being stuffed in the fat suit occurred when I was a senior in college. I had neither white hair, nor the girth to pull it off, but sometimes pillows do wonders. After I had donned the traditional attire of the merry man o' the north, I gazed at my reflection in the mirror. No mouth. This might be a problem. I tried talking but every time I did, I ended up with Santa's beard hair caught between my teeth. It was then that I wondered how many Santas before me had eaten the same hair. Filled with revulsion, I walked sideways out the door and squeezed behind the steering wheel of my 1986 Chevy Cavalier. As I drove to the piano store, I wondered to myself, "What have I gotten myself into?"

My piano teacher in college was a short, willful woman who always liked to be called Doctor. It was much more formal than Suzanne - that was the name for a nurse, or a receptionist - but certainly not a piano teacher. The piano teacher I'd grown up with was Shirley - she was a strict, rote, pedagogical teacher who I actually learned to love greatly after I stopped taking piano lessons from her. Anyway, Doctor had convinced me that I was the special student chosen that year who would be playing the part of 'Accompanist Santa' at a local piano store where local students were having piano recitals. Doctor decided that my personality lent itself well to playing "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer" at ingloriously slow tempos.

So, I said yes, not because I was particularly enamored with the task, but because it's never wise to say 'no' to piano teachers. It will come back to haunt you.

I drove twenty miles in that stuffed Santa outfit. On the way down, as I waited at stoplights, I did garner a lot of attention. One time, I looked to the left and a little girl was staring at me. I could almost read her mouth as they pulled out in front of me. "Mommy, Daddy, where is his sleigh?" I'd hate to have been in that car for the rest of the drive.

I arrived at the piano store fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. The local piano teachers greeted me at the door with their thanks and appreciation, and, I think, a great sense of amusement that I had been connived into doing the role. The kids arrived later; many of them shrank from fear looking at me. Others were inquisitive: some of the smallest ones were pushed forward by their parents who then came to me and tried to get their lists in first. Mostly, I just stood by the Christmas tree wanting to drink some eggnog but knowing I couldn't because I'd get a hairball from doing so.

The recital started; I took my place at the piano. One by one, the children came forward to sit by me at the piano bench, I on the left and they sitting as far as they could to the right side. Some of them even standing because they really didn't want to sit that close to an icon of epic proportions. Most of them wouldn't even look at me; only one of them started crying. It was a good thing she had the song memorized really well because her whole body was shaking with sobs. While I was playing, I looked around at the director of the store who gave me a frustrated point of the finger and mouthed the words, "Keep playing!"

By the end of the evening I think I had frightened three quarters of the piano students in the Waterloo area and the other twenty-five percent had torn up their lists. Their was no way any of them were going to get close to the piano playing Santa. I stood up, turned around and said, "Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas!" You'd think I'd said, "I've got a gun and know how to use it!" Everyone seemed to jump a little bit. The children cowered between their parents' legs and the parents stood with kind of a smug disapproval of a twenty-two year old Santa that couldn't seem to connect with kids.

Everyone liked the idea of Santa coming but I don't think they really wanted Santa to be there. The idea of Santa was kind of nice - a well proportioned, happy, old man who wanted to bring gifts to every boy and girl on the planet within a 12 hour time frame. The idea of the aforementioned jolly man sliding down the chimney when everyone was asleep is a nice little myth that we tell our children to appraise them of the situation of why there are dozens more presents under the tree in the morning than when they went to bed. But in reality, no one wants anyone sliding down their chimney (or coming in any other entrance) in the darkness of night. Instead of leaving cookies and milk, most of us would be calling the cops and having Santa brought up on charges of B & E. The idea of Santa is much more appealing than the reality of him actually showing up.

Same with Jesus, I think. Before I get all sorts of theological vitriol about comparing Jesus to the saintly old fellow, let me say this, I don't think Jesus is Santa, but I think some of us view him like that. That Jesus is somehow this cosmic baby that comes at Christmas every year, who we can bring our wish list to and he will deposit them in some way to our lives during the darkness of night. The idea of Jesus is very nice; that Jesus is a nice, peaceful comforter who was sent to this earth to basically provide a buffer between us and his dad - God. You know, because God is the ever angry God who wants to punish - even at Christmas. The idea of Jesus is very nice; a baby we can hold, like that big cartoon figure that holds Bugs bunny and says, "I'm going to hug him and stroke him and call him George."

The idea of Jesus is nice, but the reality is, when Jesus sits on the throne of our hearts, everything else is pushed out of the way. There isn't room selfish ambition, vainglory, pride, ego, lust - you remember the list. When the king sits on the throne, those that come to him must listen. When Jesus says, "Take up your cross and follow me," that doesn't mean - well, maybe tomorrow, or, let me see if I can go to the Christian store and find the smallest cross possible. What it means is, Christ calls us to pick up the cross and die - die to ourselves and let him...

Be born in our hearts again.

At Christmas.

That is not the idea of Jesus - but the reality. The gift of Christmas is not something we hold in our hands but the Spirit of Christ that grows in our hearts.

He is here. Christ has come.

O come let us adore him.



Merry Christmas,

Santa

History

Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, "As anyone who studies congregations knows, history matters. The story of a church's birth tends to shape that community's identity for the rest of its life, with each new generation adding its own variations to the foundational themes." I've had some time to think about those sentences lately putting them into various thinking terms of my own contextual experience. I don't believe Brown's words are limited just to congregations, but to individual people as well.

For example, while living in rural central Iowa, the town of Story City (not a city by any means but most people and places have delusions of grandeur at one point or another) has a welcome sign off Interstate 35, placed right next to the McDonald's and Happy Chef, which is supposed to infuse weary travelers to exit the highway and come to the happy place of Story City (neither a city nor particularly storied for anything). The sign, decorated with happy, caucasian, blond haired children in outfits right out of the 1850's, states the welcome in Norwegian - "Wilkommen" which every time I saw it reminded me of my grandma's house. When we'd show up at her door she'd yell out from the kitchen "Well, Come in!" Certainly, if I spoke Norwegian, was blond and predisposed to wearing britches and aprons from the mid 19th century I surely would have swerved off Interstate 35 to feast on the famous Norwegian delicacies of Chicken McNuggets and French Fries which, I can't remember if they translated the menu at McDonalds into Norwegian for all the native Norskes, would have been "Kyllingen McNuggets and Franske Venn." If you go to Oslo and visit the local McDonalds, make sure you use these words.

Obviously, the burg of Story City wanted to hold on to its past traditions, roots of its beginnings. They somehow wanted to cling to the Northern European Protestant work and life ethic of stoicism and sub-zero temperatures. The people of Story City we found to be likable, if not a bit standoffish for Christine and I were neither Norwegian nor particularly stoic. Funny thing was, almost every person we came into contact with would wave the banner of their Norwegian heritage. They proudly proclaimed their last names of Oleson, Larson, Johnson, Nelson but if I were to ask if they could speak Norwegian, they stammered that they were out of practice. When they'd tell me they still had relatives in Norway, I asked if they'd ever been there to meet them. "Well, um, we couldn't do that - we wouldn't want to be a burden to them."

I asked one of them if, when they proclaimed their 'full-blooded Norwegianosity', they claimed America as their home country. They promptly smiled through thin lips (no self-respecting 'full blooded Norwegian' would dare confront or even speak about the feelings that I had hurt), turned their back and hoped that I had a good day (even though they hoped that I'd go back to Germany where all my relatives came from).

It is not a bad thing to hold on to our roots, but there comes a point in time when all of us find ourselves in a place of new growth. Our family trees have been established, they have taken root and those trees have budded and produced seeds. The seeds cannot continue to live on the tree, they must fall and, at times, feel the pain of being separated from the tree. Sometimes, the seeds are carried by the wind or other ambulations to places far beyond where they were little nuts.

The trend, though, is changing. Before massive advances in travel and communication (i.e. cars and phones) most young people lived near the family farm, marrying other young people in the community and rarely every left their own county and even more rarely, the country. The advent of technology allowed people to travel but still be connected with home. The computer, cellphones, i-phones has allowed people of all ages to stay connected with their families even while being apart. This is, for the most part, a good thing. But a curious thing is happening with young people of today: the technology is actually stunting young people's growth as adults. Students who attend college (many of whom still live at home to save money) have the umbilical cord, the cellphone, attached to their parents who still desire some semblance of control over their children's lives. It is thought that some college students and young adults speak to their parents at minimum once per day. This may or may not be a bad thing, but a generation of young adults are finding themselves mired in the worries of their parents, frightened of messing up, and parents who worry that if they don't watch over their children, their children will make the same mistakes that they made. In the book When Parents Love Too Much: What Happens When Parents Won't Let Go" by Laurie Ashner and Mitch Meyerson, the authors write, "For parents who love too much, worry is a constant companion. Concern over their chldrens' lives and troubles can become so torturous that they cannot eat, sleep, or think about anything else." Parents forget that the very decisions they made to leave and cleave (leave their own parents and cleave to their spouse) are what make them responsible adults today.

Some statistics: In the year 2006 in America, according to All Academic Survey, 13 million post high school young adults lived with their parents. In Great Britain, the Office for National Statistics says that in 2008, approximately 1/3 of young men ages 20-34 still live with their parents and 1/5 of young women of the same age do. That figure increases in the 20-24 area: 52% of young men live with their parents and 37% of young women.

Is this a bad thing? There are many factors when looking at this issue. The economy truly hurts young people moving out of home. No jobs, no money, no affordable housing - the only option is to live at home. The price of education has sky rocketed in the last fifteen years. It is no longer truly affordable for young people to attend college and yet they can't afford not to.


Surely the financial climate has changed, but the responsibility lies on both sides. Parents, family, friends must find ways to encourage their young adults to take responsibility for their own lives. So often, because we love our children we want to help them in any way that we can. But helping often morphs into enabling them. Our helping actually hurts them in the long run.

Part of my history deals with chickens. My parents raised poultry: chickens, ducks, geese and a few mangy turkeys who had a proclivity to die in the strangest of ways. Every year we watched the seasons of poultry life - hatching, scratching and (gulp) chopping. My favorite was the hatching part. My mother was a 1st grade teacher at the local elementary school and every spring she did a hands on process with the life of animals. She would bring fertilized chicken eggs to school and place them in a metal incubator, turn them every once in a while, and then wait for the little white eggs to begin to hatch. As the years progressed, Mom would let us kids help out with the hatching process. As with most hands on experiences, there are teaching moments. One morning, as we worked quietly in my mother's classroom, my mother was called out to speak to the principal. After she left, I began to hear some cheeping noises emanating from the incubator and I walked over to inspect the exciting transformation. I lifted the cover and a few of the chicks had already made their way through the tough shell. They were ugly little things when they were fresh, kind of wrinkly and hairless like one of the cats we had later on in life. As I perused all the eggs, one in particular caught my eye. The chick's beak was sticking out through a small hole as it was attempting to push its way out. It looked like it was struggling so, after I had looked around to see if anyone was watching, I removed the lid entirely and began to help the chick to release it from the bondage of its white, enameled cage. I fancied myself something of a chicken savior - here I was helping a poor, defenseless creature to escape the struggles of early life.

My mother entered in quietly. She saw what I was doing but, as the wise woman she is, wanted to let it be a teaching moment.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

I was so startled I almost dropped the half opened egg. "I'm helping this chick get out. It looked like it was struggling."

Mom smiled. "It was. It was supposed to. The chick has to struggle to get out of the egg to build up its neck muscles so that it will be prepared to eat from the ground on its own. It struggles to be able to grow."

My mom, in her infinite wisdom that day, taught me a little something about myself that day. Even though I still have the DNA of my family tree coursing through my veins, I have been allowed to struggle in life, to learn to stand on my own two feet, to learn to feed myself. My parents, family and friends have watched me (the little nut) be taken to far away places throughout the world and have watched proudly (I think) as I am kept in God's hands to serve people here or there. But, struggles are part of life. Struggling induces growth. We all can learn a bit from our history there.

So, this week, as you have time, think about your own history - what incidents made you who you are today. What things do you hold on to from your past? What things do you need to let go of? What things in your history continue to shape who you are and where you are going?

Just call it a history test.