Version 2

Christmas 2000

 

I was sitting on the beach at Cape May shortly after Labor Day last year enjoying the special tranquility that comes when the renters go home from the New Jersey shore, and their precious youngsters are, once again, allowed to enrich the lives of various teachers by the hour. My daughter Kathleen, the one from Colorado, was visiting us at the Cape with her two young boys, Zachary and Ian, and her two young boys were harboring no thoughts of returning to Denver, if they could help it.. Zachary was not slated to start first grade until sometime later in the month, and the irrepressible Mr. Ian was to be spared the indignity of the classroom for one more year. In the three weeks the boys and their mother were visiting, the boys had been in and out of the water so much, they began to look waterlogged.

Needless to say, I enjoyed the task of grandson-sitting at the beach because both boys are agreeable company when they are not antagonizing one another, and it gave me an excuse to keep myself apart from the distaff side of the family and its unspeakable addictions to daytime talk television and shopping, for hours at a time. There were some youngsters from Quebec still around with their parents, and of course, our boys had been playing with them most of the morning. When lunch time came, the Quebecois returned to their parents and Zachary and Ian came running back up the beach to where I was sitting.

“You better enjoy the water as long as you can, boys,” I advised them as they neared my umbrella,” because when you go home to Colorado, the water in those mountains will be too cold for swimming.”

They grabbed their towels and in that unique way boys have of going through the motions of drying themselves without actually removing any water, they dropped down to the beach blanket and rummaged in Ian’s backpack for snacks.

Armed with a mostly melted Li’l Debbie’s Nutty Bar, Ian sat down and got right to the point: “Grandpa, Zachary told me there is no Santa Claus, tell him he’s wrong.”

“Am not!” said Zachary.

“Y’ar, too,” Ian replied. “Tell him, Grandpa.”

“Tell him there is no Santa Claus,” Zachary pleaded, unwilling to yield the slightest hope of winning to his younger brother.

“Well, Zachary,” I said, more to end their seesaw argument than anything else. “I don’t know why you say there isn’t a Santa Claus.

“I remember hearing that when I was a boy. I didn’t believe it then and I don’t really believe it now.”

“Grandpa, how can you say that,” Zachary countered. “Even Etienne says there’s no Santa Claus and he lives closer to the North Pole than we do.

“And last Christmas I saw mommy and daddy putting all our gifts under the tree after their Christmas eve party when I was supposed to be in my room sleeping.”

“If you were supposed to be sleeping, how did you see them,” I asked.

“I wasn’t sleeping, grandpa, and I watched them through the mirror in the hallway at the top of the stairs. We see a lot of things that way.”

“Let me see, Zachary you’re twelve, right? You’re too young to understand…”

“I’m not twelve, grandpa, I’m only six. You know that. Don’t you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Zachary, I must have mixed you up with Ian.”

“Grandpa, you’re being silly, I’m only four,” says Ian.

“I was just seeing if you were paying any attention, Ian,” I said. “I know you are four. But in a few months you’ll be five and by this time next year you’ll be almost six I’ll have to listen to the same nonsense from you that I’m getting from Zachary.”

“Why do you believe there is a Santa Claus, Grandpa?” Ian asked.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Is this going to be one of your long stories, Grandpa?” Zachary asked as he made himself more comfortable on the blanket.

“Do you want it to be?”

“Just prove him wrong, Grandpa,” Ian piped in before Zachary could answer..

Zachary too, settled in for the long haul.

“You boys know we’re in the twenty first century don’t you.”

“What’s a twenty first century Grandpa?” asked Ian?

There was a look in Zachary’s eyes that told me he would like to have asked that question first since he was just as curious as his younger brother–but he didn’t.

“Let’s hold that question for a while, I’ll try this a different way,” I said. “A long, long time ago in a place called Anatolia there was a rich man who became a priest in the early Christian church. His name was Nicholas. He lived about three hundred years after the first Christmas took place in Bethlehem and…”

“Where is Anatolia, Grandpa,” asked Zachary. “And where is Bethlehem?” Ian jumped in.

“Oh Ian,” said Zachary, “Bethlehem is near Allentown.”

“Anatolia is now called Turkey and it is at the eastern end of the Mediterranean sea between Greece and Egypt. Look, don’t you guys know anything about geography? Let’s get back to Santa Claus.

“Father Nicholas became the bishop of Myra, in Lycia, now don’t ask me where that is but it is near present day Denmere which is on the southhern coast of Anatolia or as it is known today, Turkey .The important thing is that he built a church for his congregation and in time became loved by his congregation because he was generous and understanding priest.

“In his congregation there was a poor farming family, a father and mother with three wonderful daughters. But because they were poor, and couldn’t offer a thing called a dowry, there was little chance that the parents would ever be able to marry their three daughters honorably.”

“A dowry? What’s a dowry?” I think it was Ian asking.

“I knew one of you would ask that. In those days the woman’s family was required to contribute something valuable when they offered their daughter in marriage because in those days, only men could own land and cattle and women couldn’t. The family of the bride to be would do their best to make it a good dowry. Family honor was very important and the bigger the dowry the greater was the honor to the family, and the better a husband they could expect to get for their daughter.

One day the father of an eligible bachelor announced to the girl’s father that his son was interested in marrying the farmer’s daughter. The two families talked it over and when they came to an agreement the young people were told of the decision.

“A wedding date was to be worked out for the wedding of the oldest daughter, but the father knew he could not afford a dowry, and he had little time to get one together. And no dowry meant no wedding. His family would be disgraced in Myra.

“Bishop Nicholas learned about the farmer’s problem. One dark night the Bishop took a bag of his own gold, walked past the home of the poor family and threw the bag in the window so that the family would be able to offer a valuable dowry at their oldest daughter’s wedding. The whole town was surprised when the poor family was able to make a dowry of a bag of gold.

“The next year, Bishop Nicholas heard once again about the poor family’s problem marrying off the second daughter and, once again, Nicholas took a bag of gold and dropped it into the window in the dark of night. That wedding went off well and the farmer, once again, did not know who to than k..

“And the following year, when it was time to marry off the third and youngest daughter, the Bishop tried to throw a third bag of gold into the family’s window—but the window was closed. The more than resourceful bishop climbed the one storey building to the roof and dropped the bag of gold down the chimney and fled back to his church.. Where do you think the bag of gold landed?”

“Probably in the fire,” said Zachary.

“I don’t know,” said Ian. “Where did it land?”

“No, the bag of gold bounced off the sides of the chimney as it dropped and fell into one of the stockings the youngest daughter had hung by the fireplace to dry. And that’s why we still hang our stockings on the fireplace every Christmas eve–or on the radiator if you happen to live in the city.”

“People for miles around heard about the bags of gold and, though they didn’t know where they came from, and thought it a wonderful thing to do. A long, long time later, when the Bishop was made a saint and people learned about the three daughters dowries and the many other kind things the Bishop had done in Myra over the years to make people happy, people started exchanging gifts in celebration of the saint’s day, December 6. The Bishop was known then as Saint Nicholas.”

“What does that have to do with Santa Claus, Grandpa?” Zachary asked.

“Yeah, Grandpa,” piped in Ian, hoping I had an answer for his brother.

“Zachary, let me hear you say his name as if it was one word. You know Saintnicholas.”

Zachary tried and did a good job.

“Now say the name three times without stopping.” He did.

“Now say it five times without stopping and say it fast.”

“What did that sound like Ian,” I asked.

“It sounded like santaclause,” he said.

“Yes, Ian, over the years the name Saint Nicholas has come to be pronounced Santa Claus, at least here in this country. He’s known as Pere Noel in France, Grandfather Frost in Russia and Father Christmas in England.

“As time went on, and the people began observing December 25 as the birthday of Christ, the exchanging of gifts that used to happen on Saint Nicholas’ Day, started to take place on Christmas Day.”

“But that doesn’t mean there is a Santa Claus, Grandpa,” Zachary offered triumphantly. “How would he get around the world to everybody all at once.”

“Santa Claus. is a spirit, boys. Do you know what a spirit is?”

“Yeah it’s a ghost that haunts houses like on Halloween,” Zachary volunteered.

“Yes it’s something like that. Let me ask you, are ghosts real?”

“Yeah,” piped in both boys.

“The spirit of Saint Nicholas is real, too, and is still with us after about 1800 years. So if ghosts are real and haunt houses, Santa Claus is real and causes people to give gifts. at Christmas. The idea of Santa Claus spread all over what was the known world in those days and people added to the story.

“There was an old Norse god named Odin who had a marvelous white beard and an eight legged horse. The beard became part of the Santa Claus story and the eight legged horse became Santa’s eight reindeer.

“But how does he get all those gifts around the world?” Zachary the Doubter now asked. “In the sleigh?”

“The sleigh is little more than a symbol any more—and before you ask me what a symbol is, it’s a recognizable image that represents something greater. They looked confused.

“Why with federal safety inspectors, OSHA, the EPA and animal rights activists these days Santa Claus. has had to look for more efficient ways to get the gifts around. I expect he uses Federal Express and the Post Office and every other package delivery service around to gets the toys and dolls to all the children. But the world had become so big, you know, there are so many more people in the world today than when I was a boy, that we’ve had to get back to the early days of Christmas and exchange gifts among ourselves. I guess that’s what you saw Mommy and Daddy putting under the Christmas tree. But you know they can’t do everything. Santa Claus still comes through.

“I think it’s time we went back to the house for lunch. Will you guys help me carry the towels and stuff?”

Before he moved, Zachary asked what seemed like one last question. “How come there are so many Santa Clauses around right after Thanksgiving? Ian and I had our pictures taken each year and Santa Clause is never the same.”

“Well Old Saint Nicholas had those three young ladies from Myra to worry about in his day and now he has to worry about one or two billion children in towns and cities and countries all over the world. And he needs a lot of helpers to do that. All those helpers are doing Santa’s work on the local level, and I admit they are not Santa-but they are doing his work. And that’s what you have to remember. Now let’s get going. I’m hungry. Aren’t you?” The boys agreed they were hungry so we all went up to the house and had lunch.