Read on Twitter
Like most teenagers, I started to lose some of my childhood magic when I stopped believing in Santa Claus—and then I met him.
My dad owned a shoe store in the quaint downtown of our small suburb just outside of Syracuse, and I used to spend lots of afternoons pinballing my way around town, rummaging through record racks, eating my weight in pizza, and watching my dad work the room.
Looking back it seemed to almost always be winter, though I’m certain we did have a couple of weeks without snow if memory serves me. One December Saturday afternoon, I started to hear rumblings that Santa was indeed coming to town, and in fact was only a few doors away from us.
He made his list, checked it a couple of times, and was on his way to spread some early yuletide gaiety. The store filled with young families who began to crackle with the expectancy such appearances inspire in children and their gladly complicit parents.
Not me, though. I was having none of such folly. I was so over Santa, and in fact quite insulted by the whole charade. As Saint Nick’s stand-in got closer to the store, a noise began to rise, and as he walked through the door I slowly backed toward the doorway to the stockroom.
Noticing my not-so-subtle retreat, my father turned and smiled, bellowing, “Stay and see Santa!” I felt my anger rise and my face grow hot. “This is so stupid!” I thought to myself. “What a joke!”
I pivoted and ran into the stockroom and proceeded to jump into a large box, pulled the flaps over myself, and lay there in the darkness like a magician’s assistant waiting to be run through with swords.
Suddenly I heard quiet footsteps on the weathered hardwood floors that got louder and closer, until the cardboard flaps covering me were pulled back and the fluorescent light came streaking through¬—and there he was, leaning over me in the box: Santa.
“Shit!” I thought to myself, but I couldn’t move or speak, paralyzed with embarrassment. Then, without hesitating he smiled and said softly, “I know you don’t believe in Santa and that’s okay.
You don’t have to believe in Santa. You can just believe that you have parents who adore you and want you to feel loved and want to give you wonderful things. That’s a good enough thing to believe in, isn’t it?”
He smiled again and left—just like that: Santa with the freakin’ mic drop to the teenager hiding in a cardboard box in a shoe store stockroom.
I know he was just a guy in a suit, but I’ve never looked at Christmas or my parents the same way since—and I never roll my eyes when Santa shows up, because I’ve embraced the wonder and magic of what love does when we give and receive it.
- 'Hope and Other Superheroes'
- 'Hope and Other Superheroes'
