tales from christmas past

many young children beleive in santa clause. they hear stories about how he has magical reindeer that can fly and pull his sleigh, or that to make him happy they should give him cookies and milk. i must tell you that they are mistaken. santa is a somewhat crude funny little man that travels in a taxi and reeks of jameson irish whiskey. this i know is true because i have seen him with my own two eyes. 1

this was just one of the many things i loved about christmas when i was younger. my grandmother would hire one of her friends to be santa for the night just to get us kids to shut up. it was a great christmas eve ritual. going to her house on any occasion with the rest of the extended family there was a sight to see in the first place, but christmas eve was complete chaos. everyone would bring some type of dish to pile on the kitchen or the dining room table. there would be a sea of plates stretching as far as the eye could see. you weren't discouraged to talk at all, but you were lucky if by some sheer miracle that anyone heard what you were saying.2

there were two adjacent living rooms in her house connected to the dining room. in one you would find a crowd of inebriated aunts and uncles laughing and saying they loved each other one minute, and then yelling about politics and such the next. but in the other room you would find seven googley eyed adolescents staring at a mountain of presents surrounding a tall tree covered in bulbs and 60's stlye ubber big lights. and all the while we wondering one thing : who has more. after a short period of of whining and begging we finally found out the answer to that question. most of the time it would be my younger cousin danny, seeing how he was the baby of the family. but no one really went home empty handed, except for one year when james just got entirely too many clothes. 3

by the end of the evening i headed off to our humble van with a bag of my new loot and snuggled myself in one of my dad's sweaters as everyone else started to say their rediculously long goodbyes. one hour later i would be in my bed hoping that a taxi cab would pull up to my house and the crude little man i saw earlier that night would leave me a few good things under our tree.4