Santa is on the List

A True Story

Photo by Anderson W Rangel on Unsplash

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Growing up, I never believed in Santa Clause, and it wasn’t because my mother didn’t try to make me believe.

I have to preface this story with a few facts. I was born in New York City 1990, and lived most of my life in the housing projects, specifically the random housing project on 89th Street, Amsterdam Avenue. Also, my mother having been born in Puerto Rico will also be relevant.

My first memory of myself having suspicions that the whole Santa thing wasn’t adding up happened when I was quite young. I remember asking my mother, “How does Santa get in our apartment?”

She gave the classic and correct answer, “Santa comes down the chimney.”

Confusion does not describe the level of perplexity that overcame me. At this point in my life, I had only seen chimneys on Christmas cards and cartoons. We lived in the projects, after all. The only heating in the apartment came from radiators and the pipe that pumped hot steam in the corner of the rooms.

I followed the question up with the only correct response, “But we don’t have a chimney…”

I think my mother panicked, for her response was, “His reindeer land on the roof, and he comes through the window.”

The obvious response would have been that he enters through the door, that’s what gives me the impression she panicked. Also important, the building we lived in had 18 floors, and we lived on the 14th. This answer gave my tiny 90’s kid brain the immediate image, probably from watching too much Batman the Animated Series, that Santa lands on the roof with his sled and reindeer, then uses a ninja claw rope and jumps through the apartment windows Die Hard style, while leaving the gates on the window completely intact.

That image was too much for me to accept, and from that day on, Santa needed to be exposed.

I questioned everything about Santa after that point. What I did know was what mattered to me: Santa wasn’t real, but I was still getting presents.

The first line of questioning began with a simple observation. Santa delivers presents on Christmas Eve, when all the children of the world are sleeping. But there is a huge flaw in this story. That flaw is that I am Hispanic. We stay up during Christmas Eve and open our gifts at 12 am. That left me with an obvious question, “Why are the presents already under the tree?”

My mother’s answer, “Santa’s elves mail them in, and he just fills up the stockings.”

Problem with that answer: We never hung stockings. My mother corrected that and bought stocking for that year.

I accepted her answer as best I could, but my suspicions were far too great at this point, and my observations left me with another question. Every year, after I opened my presents, someone (a relative or family friend) would knock on the door and say, “Look what Santa left at our house!” My sense for suspicion would shout at me, and I would ask the all-important question, “Why did Santa leave a gift at your home? He already knows where I live.”

My mother’s response, “His bag has a bunch of presents. Sometimes presents fall out, or he grabs the wrong one. Like when you bring the wrong book for homework.” That last comment was her showing a crack in her facade. When backed into a corner, a Hispanic mother always fires off your mistakes that she has loaded for a comeback.

I now had to accept that Santa was a magical ninja and a dummy. This was too much. But I learned from this experience. My goal from now on was to observe silently. This was bigger than my mom. The whole block was in on it, down the likes of shady Miguel, who would leave the building while my mother did tenant patrol and return with a car bumper and Tic Tacs as hush money. If Santa left a gift at their home, they were on the list, my list, MY Christmas list.

Now my suspicions had grown passed Santa. The Three Kings were on the list as well. Am I supposed to believe that if I leave hay in front of my door, the Three Kings will stop by, their camel will eat the hay, and they will drop off a gift? No, that was too much. We never even left hay out. I only saw hay at the petting zoo. It was always the poorer people who would give me a gift on Three Kings Day. But this was a secondary beast to tackle.

One Christmas Eve, I fell asleep under the tree before midnight. My mother woke me up and shouted, “Santa was here!” She enthusiastically pointed to a trail of red feathers from the window to the presents to the stockings.

“Why are there feathers?” I was sleepy and confused.

“From his suit!” I think my mother thought his suit was made of feathers instead of fluff.

I added this to my mental list of things that didn’t make sense and opened my presents.

The next year, I was taken to see Santa at Macy’s. I have to admit, all the kids that question how Santa could be at multiple locations had one over me, because I didn’t think to ask. What did startle me was when I met Santa and sat on his lap. He greeted me with cheer and bad breath. What’s the point of magic if you still have bad breath? This sent me into a panic, so when Santa asked me what I wanted, I spat out that I wanted an elephant. He let out an authentic jolly laugh that my nose still hasn’t forgiven me for. I don’t know who or what I thought the Macy’s guy was, but he couldn’t be the real Santa.

I did get an Elefun game out of it from my spying father. Not bad, to be honest. Its an elephant with a blower attached to its nose that blows out little butterflies, and you have to catch them with a tiny net before they hit the floor.

The moment of truth came in the second grade. It was the final day of class before Christmas break, and I think we broke the teacher. We were being extra rowdy that day, and understandably, Christmas was around the corner and school was almost over. Our excitement must have triggered something in Ms. DeSilva, because after several attempts to get us to calm down, she shouts at us, “You guys won’t listen because Santa? Well Santa isn’t coming, because Santa is DEAD! He died over a hundred years ago!”

I don’t remember what else she said, because the class erupted in a torrent of tears and bellowing cries, “Santa is DEAD! NOOO!”

I remember looking at my classmates, in their grief from their world-shattering revelation, and thinking, “I knew it!”

We walked down the stairs at the end of the day, most of the class sobbing, and myself marching down with a triumphant smile. For I knew the truth: “Santa was dead.”

The last part I remember is sitting on the edge of my bed beside my mother, and she had the most defeated expression I have ever seen on her. So I asked, “Mommy, is Santa real?”

She sighed, “No.”

“So who gives me my presents?”

She didn’t even look me in my eyes. “I do.”

“So I’m still getting presents this year?”

“Yes.”

That was all I needed to hear. Santa was dead, and my mother was buying me presents.

My father eventually learned about this and wanted to talk with the teacher, which is usually correct, because she honestly had no right to do that, but my mother filled him in on how this was an inevitable revelation.

I quickly learned that Three Kings Day is really a day to get gifts from people who couldn’t afford to get you a gift on Christmas Day, or for your parents to stash one of the gifts you would have gotten on Christmas aside and give it to you on the 6th and pretend that being Hispanic has the benefit of another day for presents.

I had no problem not believing in Santa. The fact that my mother could get me gifts every year despite her living in NYC on a babysitter’s salary was enough magic for me. Despite all my trust issues with these magical holiday mascots, I never did question the Tooth Fairy. She brought me money, and I wasn’t going to risk loosing my dollar.

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