Here Comes (the Real) Santa Claus
I believe in Santa Claus. No, I didn’t always believe, but nine years ago, on Christmas Eve, he knocked on my front door and handed me a stocking filled with candy and toys.
Unlike the majority of my friends, I wasn’t introduced to the jolly guy until second grade. My family emigrated from Taiwan to a small town in central Georgia, where my dad got a visa for his family and a job doctoring inmates at a nearby penitentiary. I had just learned English, and from what little I could gather from my classmates, there was this guy who would come down one’s chimney and put toys in one’s stocking on Christmas Eve! What a great country, I thought. After I looked up stocking in my Chinese-English dictionary, I knew what I had to do.
On that fateful night, after everyone went to bed, I took my longest, cleanest knee sock and attached it to a nail already on the mantel. Obviously, the previous owners of this house were no strangers to this Santa character. Unfortunately, my parents were.
I woke up before everyone else on Christmas Day and ran to the fireplace. To make a sob story short, I was hit with the reality of a flaccid sock and the biggest lie ever told. I indulged in a few tears, quickly took down the sock, and stuffed it in the back of a drawer. Santa was dead.
Every December since then, the topic of Christmas memories would inevitably come up, and I would regale my friends with my poor-little-me story. I had to make it as wry as possible, or else I would cry.
How could I know that Santa was just late? Nine years ago, on Christmas Eve, an older man with a white beard and a red cap knocked on my front door. He said, “I’ve been looking for you for twenty-five years.” He handed me a bulging red stocking, winked, and left. On top of the stocking was a card. It read: “For Becky—I may have missed you in the second grade, but you’ve always lived in my heart. Santa.”
Through tear-blurred eyes, I recognized the curlicue handwriting of Jill, a friend I had met just two months before. I later discovered that the older man was her father. Jill had seen the hurt little girl underneath the jaded thirty-something woman and decided to do something about it.
So now I believe that Santa is real. I don’t mean the twinkle-eyed elf of children’s mythology or the creation of American holiday marketers. Those Santas annoy and sadden me. I believe in the Santa Claus that dwells inside good and thoughtful people. This Santa does not return to the North Pole after a twenty-four-hour delivery frenzy but lives each day purposefully, really listens to friends, and then plans deliberate acts of kindness.
Becky Sun is a senior editor for Iconoculture, a consumer insights company. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and three children, whose stockings are filled with care every Christmas Eve.