Season's Greetings!

Last year around this time, I received the following email:
If I get one more pesky Christmas letter telling me in nauseous detail that on the second of January 2005 it rained and on the third it didn't, describing their husband's brilliant doings/redundancy/performance/Viagra requirements, their children's education/homework/sports prowess/exam results/love life/drug habits, and filling me in on all their beastly grandchildren's first teeth/burp/nappy change/word, I might do something I will regret.

I share the writer’s sentiments. Now that everyone has a computer, Christmas year-in-review emails/newsletters are beginning to take on the patina of an established tradition. Ever noticed how some seem to be written by a ghost writer in the third person or the by family dog (ever so cutesy) with the aid of a Microsoft X-mas newsletter template? Occasionally the names of the family members will be penned in but more often the letter starts with a generic salutation like, “Hello Folks!!!”

Bah! Humbug! Frankly I’m not interested in every detail of your kitchen/bathroom/bedroom makeover. And hey, does everyone’s kid ace every thing? Surely not! And as for Chewy, your eighteen-year-old Labrador retriever who you finally decided to euthanize? Okay, so he died on the way to the vet. I’m real sorry but geez, you’ve been sending me Christmas cards for eons, I haven’t seen you for yonks and who knew about Chewy? Now about that vacation at your time share in Kruger National Park…wow, that’s impressive!

As for the extensive description of this year’s weather, I live on this planet too. I know the summers are hot and the winters are cold. I don’t happen to remember the weather from one year to the next but that’s because I don’t make a point of it and those who do, don’t need to be reminded, or do they?

Then there are the lists of people who visited, which read like the Queen’s social calendar. Give me a break! I don’t know all your pals but I’m sure they know who they are and probably remember the visit themselves.

Commenting on these views, one of my email correspondents said: “I know what you mean. There are one or two that are very well done; and there are some that make you want to puke. The worst, I think, are the humble boasting ones to the effect that we have so many blessings, and then going on and on, in detail about all the blessings—the trip to Antarctica, meeting with the Pope, the kid who has to choose between Harvard, Stanford or M.I.T. But the problem is, one doesn't want to air one's dirty linen. In such an impersonal forum, I'm not going to talk about my depression, our marriage counselling, Ken’s failing grades, Evelyn’s teenage pregnancy or the dismay my husband Bob feels over Susie getting married to a man whose faith isn’t Bob’s, or worse, has no faith.”

My guess is that these mundane but ever so newsy missives are written more for the writer than the reader and would be a more honest year’s appraisal if the writer never intends to mail them. Should you still have the urge to write your year in review, let ‘er rip! Then stuff it --in your own Christmas stocking not in an envelope or inbox addressed to me. Pull-ease.

Santa Baby






He sees when you are sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows if you’ve been bad or good.
So be good for goodness sake.
Most North Americans will recognize the above lyrics and can probably hum the tune. Oddly enough, it was our Egyptian tour guide who reminded me of the Christmas jingle. His explanation that an angel sat on each shoulder, one to record his good deeds and the other his bad all in preparation for the final reckoning caused my mind to wander to the ditty.
He's making a list,
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out
Who's naughty and nice.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town penned in 1922, has been performed by Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, The Beach Boys, The Jackson Five, Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen…need I go on?
I first heard it when I was three years old and didn’t much care for the message. Who was this guy who could note my good and bad behaviour? Didn’t I have a big brother for that? Lest I forget the power of Santa, my parents reinforced the myth and told me he could reward or punish me by giving or withholding Christmas presents.
Newly emigrated from Europe to Canada, we had no television. My brother and I would listen to nightly radio broadcasts charting Santa’s progress from the North Pole to Toronto in time for his annual parade, sponsored for seventy-seven years by Eaton’s, a once prosperous and now defunct Canadian department store.
Well I remember that November day in 1953. I wore elegant hand-me-downs from the daughter of my mother’s New York friend. Her hand-tailored spring coat, transparent nylon gloves and best of all underpants with the back panel totally covered by rows of frills (I sooo wanted to wear back to front) offered no warmth whatsoever. Toronto shares the same latitude as Rome but not its November temperatures, the average being 7°C. All about me, Canadian kids wore knitted hats, woollen mittens and snow suits while I stood in front of my mother with chattering teeth, bone-chilled bare legs and frozen fingers.
I vividly recall that virtually all the parade’s participants wore white gloves but because one’s memory often proves to be faulty, I located a Canadian Government website to verify my recollection. Recorded memories described the penetrating cold that day. Archived film footage of the 1953 parade showed well-bundled children and sure enough, white gloves were the order of the day. That’s what made the next incident so frightening.
Just as a Massey-Ferguson tractor pulled into view a float bearing Santa and his reindeer, out of nowhere, huge white-gloved hands grabbed me from behind, plucked me off the ground, hoisted me to massive shoulders and pinned me there. I did not know whose hatted head I was clutching. Warned never to go with or talk to strangers, what was I to do when abducted?
You better watch out,
You better not cry,
Better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town.
Petrified I could not enjoy my vantage point. Who was this guy? Finally, beneath the peaked policeman’s cap the head spoke to me with my father’s voice. “We’ll go meet Santa now.” Wearing his Saint John’s Ambulance uniform under his great coat, my father had been on parade duty that day.
A brief ride on an ancient streetcar, heated by a wood stove, and I was standing with trepidation outside the brass-handled spinning glass and wooden doors of Eaton’s Queen Street branch. I had never seen revolving doors before. With every turn a gust of hot air swooshed out into the street. Eager to be warm, I dashed into an empty partition of the revolving door and got my head caught between the door and the doorjamb. Pandemonium broke out. I may have screamed, my mother too. She pushed my head; my father pulled it. Hours later, or so it seemed, with sore ears and angry parents, I was led to an ‘alligator’. Horrified by the backward slanting slats of an ancient wooden escalator and none too keen to balance on the rickety rolling slats that didn’t quite form steps, I balked.
Indiana Jones had an easier time entering the Temple of Doom than I had reaching Toyland. Amid the bawling, the wailing and the coaxing, I edged toward to the jolly chuckler. The closer I got to him, the more intrigued I became by his sparkling white beard. When it came my turn to sit on his knee, I did so without fear—so keen was I to examine that beard. It was a fake. I said so.
No longer did Santa or his tab keeping terrify me. Before the year was out, my elder brother, an expert in all things then and now, said there was no such person as Santa Claus, but I’d already divined that.
A half-century later, Santa’s surveillance capabilities are no match to those of credit card and cell phone companies, closed circuit television or the Internet Interpol. They know if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.


This piece was published in the Dec/Jan 2008 edition of Hello Basel.