AN ADULT
FATHER CHRISTMAS
STORY
Michael Clifford
ten-minute-stories.com
© Copyright Michael Clifford, 2011
An Adult Father Christmas Story
Michael Clifford
Copyright 2010 by Michael Clifford
Smashwords Edition
I‘VE SEEN FATHER CHRISTMAS. Yes, Santa Claus, just as you would imagine him: red coat, white beard and jolly laugh. And of course the sack with its presents, although the gift he brought me wasn’t any pleasant toy. It was something much better. In case you think I’m some child who’s telling you about what he dreamt, let me tell you I’m forty years old, a manager and have two children of my own. And no, I hadn’t been drinking alcohol that Christmas Eve when I met him. By the time Christmas Day dawned I was to understand how it might be possible for one man to visit every home in the world in the course of one night and leave presents there for each and every child.
The story began a long time before. When I was a child, in fact. I’d often seen Santa Claus as a kid, although I always thought, over the years afterwards, that it was my father dressed up. One year the man standing under the tree really did look strange, and I could never work out who it really was. It turned out to be a blow-up Santa Claus figure which my mother brought home late on Christmas Eve, after I’d gone to bed. Because it was thrown into a cupboard early the next day, I could only solve the mystery years later. But now, after what I experienced last year, I wonder how often that man in a red coat and white beard, standing at the end of my childhood bed, really was only my father or uncle.
The stranger things began when I had children of my own, Charlotte and Benjamin. Like a lot of parents, Susan and me enjoyed pumping up our kids with expectation in the December weeks (I never wanted to begin it too early, you see, because I thought the Christmas season should only begin with Advent). Charlotte was the older, and she would take a lot of care writing out her wish list which was to be sent to the North Pole.
’Daddy,’ she said one year, when she was five years old. ‘I won’t ask for that riding doll.’
Susan and I had already bought the blonde rider and pony which had come endlessly in the TV adverts, and which was already securely concealed in the loft. Charlotte had said several times how much she’d like it.
‘Why?’ I asked, having already planned how I’d build a small stable for the pony.
Charlotte lowered her eyes. ‘Because she will hurt me.’
I put my hands gently around my red-haired daughter. ‘Why do you think she will hurt you, darling?’
‘The people told me,’ she whispered.
‘What people?’
‘The people. I don’t want the doll.’ There was a very determined tone in her voice.
I decided I would wait a few days and then ask her again. But the matter was decided for me. There came an urgent announcement in the papers and on the news that the manufacturers were recalling all models of that doll, because of a production defect. ‘The paint used on the doll has shown to evoke allergic skin reactions which can be harmful to children,’ was the reason given.
I put it all down to coincidence. But the next year Benjamin woke up on Christmas morning and started ripping open a packet which had been beautifully wrapped in a soft green and red. ‘Who’s that from?’ I asked Susan, puzzled.
‘Search me,’ she shrugged, with a mystified look.. ’I thought it was from you.’
‘Look at what he’s got! I would never give any child of mine those!’
Benjamin’s eyes were glowing as he unpacked a pair of roller skates. As a kid I’d spent a week in hospital because of an accident on skates and I’d sworn, later in life, I would never give my own children such things. ’Whose name is on the label?’ I asked, kneeling down.
‘There isn’t a name,’ Ben said without interest as he examined his shining prize with their adjustable straps. He was right; the present had been beautifully packed but without any clear indication as to who’d forked out the money to give him the pleasure.
‘They’re from Santa Claus,’ he added, ‘aren’t they, Dad?’
‘Of course they are, son,’ I answered. He was seven years old, and still young enough to enjoy the magic. That was what I envied about children, that they had the freedom to enjoy the magic of Christmas while we adults knew it to be a time of stress, of expense and of symbols which had long lost their meaning.
‘I saw Santa Claus flying over last night,’ Ben continued. ’I saw his reindeer and sledge.’
‘So did I, when I was your age.’ I’d long since decided that the line of golden lights I had witnessed when I was eight years old, which I had taken to be reindeer, and the red form at the end of that line which I was sure was the man himself, were really a late night flight. That is the way age and experience destroys magic.
‘Look at this!’ Susan was holding something in her hand; her eyes wide in bewilderment. It was a gift tag; on it was scribbled, in handwriting I couldn’t recognise: To Ben, Happy Xmas, skate carefully and happily.
‘Mum, Dad, I’ve always wanted skates like these.’
Later on we just decided that some relative had heard his wish and decided to give him the skates. They hadn’t written their name because they’d realised, we guessed, that we would be cross about it. But nobody in the family ever admitted to it and, because so many had keys, it wouldn’t have been a problem to put them under the tree while we slept.
In the days and weeks that followed Christmas Ben skated as much as he could, but always under the careful eye of Susan or me. Then the snow came and the skates disappeared back into the box, and then under the stairs. Spring came late that year, but on the first day that the sun shone Ben got them out again and took them to the park. As summer came his skating practice increased, and from then on it became a passion. By the following September he had become such a good skater that he won a local roller skating contest, an act which did much to boost his self-confidence. All with those skates which had mysteriously appeared under the Christmas tree.
Then Christmas came once more, and Benjamin and Charlotte started writing their wish-lists to Santa Claus. Colleagues from continental countries had often scoffed when I told them our children still believed in Father Christmas when they were seven, eight or even nine. But it was easy to understand. In many other European countries Father Christmas is usually a friend who dresses up and comes to visit on Christmas Eve, and it’s not too long before the kids there notice that the red-coated bearer of gifts has the same jeans as some family friend or relative. But in England Santa Claus comes in the middle of the night and, because children never see him, they can believe for longer that he really exists.
I was nine when I myself learnt the awful truth. I had already noticed that there were toys hidden in the house days before Christmas but my father, when challenged, would always explain that they were there already because Santa Claus would come and pick them up, and he would bring them back and put them under the tree in the night of Christmas Eve. ‘Even Father Christmas needs help, m’boy.’ For a child there was a kind of twisted logic to this. But the lid flew off the tin the Christmas morning when Dad remarked how Santa Claus had successfully come down the chimney, and I replied by pointing out that we’d had central heating put in the summer before.
And so the magic of Christmas died. Like many parents I tried to revive it with my own children, but that always felt like cheating. Neither Susan nor I wanted to tell them that Father Christmas didn’t exist, but the decision was taken out of our hands.
One December afternoon, shortly before he turned nine, Benjamin came home from school looking very forlorn. When asked why, he told Susan: ‘A boy at school told us there’s no such thing as Santa Claus, that the Mums and Dads put the presents there.’ This weasel of a kid who broke the spell - I think his name was Sammy - had trendy parents who didn’t believe in all that Christmas jazz (except probably when it came to receiving their own presents). Sammy’s down-to-earth, spoilsport parents had explained in detail to him how other parents went about deceiving their offspring in the small hours between 24th and 25th December.
Sammy then felt it was his duty to spread the word among the other kids of this world. Charlotte was also to see the light, thanks to Sammy’s missionary work. So the game was up. After that the weeks of November and December every year became the time of endless arguments with our children about why they couldn’t have this toy, or later computer game, or article of clothing. Everywhere, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, we hear that it is the time to be generous. Children, and the teenagers they later become, can’t understand why their own parents don’t open the vaults and throw out the gold like everyone is supposed to do.
Why is Christmas so magical? Is it because we all expect to receive gifts? Is it because of the warm, colourful lights we see everywhere at that time? Or is it because of our memories of Christmas as children, when the world seemed so much simpler? I always think it is this longing for a time of innocence, which the figure of Father Christmas symbolises. Not that I had any memory of that simple existence in the weeks before Christmas last year. In fact I was feeling so down that the seasonal spirit had gone before Yuletide itself had arrived. ’Talk to someone!’ friends of mine suggested. Good advice, but who should I talk to? Nobody seemed to have time or inclination to listen.
But there was something unusual in the air as I set off for home on Christmas Eve. Driving out of the village where my mum lived I glanced up at the sky and thought there was a chance of snow. ‘A white Christmas, who’d have thought it?’ I said to myself as the colourful, warm lights of the houses disappeared behind me and I started to drive though the total blackness of open country. The twin headlights of the car were the only things I could see, and I thought they would light up a rabbit or some other animal running across the road in front of me.