Going to See Santa

Most of us had the experience of going to see Santa when we were kids. It’s a long standing tradition that is as much a part of the Holiday as hanging your stocking on Christmas Eve. I was in the local mall the other night where Santa often resides these days. Standing on the mall’s second level, I had a birds eye view of the Santa Claus spectacle. There was a long line of anxious parents and small children, many of them too young to be anxious themselves, other than the fear some may have had of this big guy with a beard in a red suit. I must say this mall’s Santa Claus looked very much like the real thing, right out of a Coke ad you might say.
A little girl, perhaps three years old, dressed in a Christmassy red and green dress, was giving her mother a very hard time about sitting with Santa so she could have her picture taken. The little girl was adorable but she was definitely not in an adoring mood. She wanted no part of the guy who is supposed to come across with all the goodies on the morning of December 25th. The child’s mother was imploring her to sit with Santa. The woman seemed, well, desperate to capture the moment on film…or I suppose should say, digitally. She sat her daughter down on Santa’s lap, then next to him and finally in front of him to no avail. As soon as the mother stepped away so the picture could be taken, the child got up and ran to her.
The elves got into the act, doing their best to bribe the kid with stuffed reindeer and then candy. No dice. Then the mother decided to let her little girl watch other children make nice with Santa. Three kids did just that but the star of my little show still demurred. I have to say I was impressed with the behavior of the other parents standing patiently on line with their restless kids. No one seemed the least bit perturbed by this child’s refusal to sit with St. Nick and no one gave the mother the evil eye for her persistence. In the end, they got the photo but Mom is in the picture too. Perhaps one day it will make for a funny story the little girl can tell her fiancé. That’s if she can find the photo 25 years from now.
My take is simple. A picture with Santa is not worth the hassle I witnessed the other night. I say this because I have never been in an adult’s home that featured a picture of the resident sitting on Santa’s lap. Now I’ll bet you have several precious photos that you’ve had retouched, blown-up and framed because they have special meaning for you. I’ll also wager that you don’t have one of you with some big, fat, oddly dressed stranger in red. Think back to your own picture with Santa. Remember the look on your face? Is that fear in your tear stained eyes or was it a side effect of the million watt flash bulb that just went off in your face?
What happens to these pictures anyway? You take them home and show them to grandparents who ooh and ahh over them, secretly wondering whether you can even trust the people who play Santa anymore. You display them on a countertop or bookshelf during the Holidays and then…you put them in a box with other photos. Listen, a few nights before my sojourn to the mall, I was wading through a huge box of old photos. Guess what I found? Right, I found several pictures of my son and daughter having the all important powwow with Mr. C. I even found one of me.
Considering how busy parents with young children are during the Holidays, I can’t imagine what possesses them to stand on a long line surrounded by crying kids. Some parents do find ways to avoid it. Recently a friend told me that he and his wife decided not to tell their children stories about Santa Claus. They felt it would be lying to them and they wanted to build trust right from the beginning. If you ask me they probably just didn’t want to wait around for the photos. The funny thing is their kids, all adults now, complain that their parents robbed them of the Santa experience. Go figure. I wonder if they were in line the other night with their little ones.

Copyright 2010 Len Serafino. All rights reserved.