The Sighting

“Adam said Santa Claus isn’t real, but I told him I’ve seen the effidence.” My eight year old son was standing there, on the first day of Christmas vacation, puffed up with the sort of indignation that can accompany encountering deniers at any age.

“Ev-i-dence,” I enunciated, sounding to myself like my father, experiencing one of those ashen I-am-becoming-my-parents moments that start in your thirties and never seem to stop. I knew my son was approaching the end of one of those childhood roads where mysteries resolve into facts, becoming the building blocks of concrete adulthood. Over the years, mortaring each stone into place, we gradually turn our lives into keeps of responsibility and seriousness, shored up against doubt and chaos, not realizing that each addition makes it a little harder for magic to seep in.

Standing there in a house adorned with wreaths and garlands, suffused with the crisp, citrusy scent of pine mingling with sweet smoke from the fireplace, I hoped for a normal life for my son. Therefore I did not offer him my perspective on the matter. At times I’ve wondered if leaving that stone unset had let too much magic into my life, perhaps enough to turn into a little bit of madness. I also saw what happened when my father’s stone had come cracking loose later in life.

Dad struggled with Christmas when I was little. For a man whose success was predicated on the scientific method, a festival of faith seemed to offend his sensibilities. He abhorred mystery, believing that reason was a light that could banish the shadows of ignorance. Having parlayed his Ivy League education into tremendous success in the semiconductor industry, much of his adult life was dedicated to running his business, but in his heart he remained a scientist. Thankfully, he took a largely hands-off approach to Christmas, knowing he couldn’t win against Mom, who loved the season and used it as an opportunity to create memories we all cherish to this day.

I remember once overhearing him say “The Santa myth grooms children to lead unexamined lives,” which sent me scurrying to the adult dictionary in the study to decipher the words I didn’t understand, just as I had been taught to do. Even after defining every word I did not know, I still did not understand, as what he had said contradicted not just what Mom had taught us, but the evidence I had seen and held in my own hands. For several years I didn’t know what to believe, though that all changed on Christmas Eve when I was ten.

Dad’s dad had been born into frog-eating poverty. As a child, he’d walk home the long way, along the railroad tracks, collecting coal that had fallen off of passing locomotives to heat the family home. He’d dropped out of the eighth grade to take a factory job, and as a result had regarded his own childrens’ education with the level of urgent ardor usually only found in immigrant parents from war torn countries.

The result was my father, who, as a child, had learned that academic dedication bore fruits of not just parental approval, but also garnered the attention of the powers that be. Through this, he built a ladder of perfect attendance and science fair ribbons that earned him success along every step along the way. This was the template for life that he strove to pass onto his own children. His adult existence of investor relations and international trade deals was as far removed from the family’s ramshackle roots as one could get, and he intended to keep it that way.

He never hit us or even raised his voice, but his lexicon full of pejoratives that all seemed to start with i: ignoramus, imbecilic, impertinent, irresponsible, etc. was all it usually took to obtain compliance. One knew the lecture was over when he affected one of his theatrical eye-rolls, dramatic enough to elicit notes from any mime. These could be so drawn out that once, at a fancy restaurant, my brother dragged his sleeve through the bernaise sauce atop his Dover sole, and our father’s reaction was so protracted that the maitre’d ran over, thinking he was witnessing a medical crisis.

Even today, there are things in your home and mine based on his designs. This made him rich, and between the money and the man himself, we’d likely have turned out the worst sort of people if not for Mom. No one could ever quite understand what the crunchy granola hippie girl had seen in a guy like Dad, but if not for that unexpected pairing, I wouldn’t be listening to an eight year old explain the forensics of Santa’s existence.

”Ev-i-dence,” said my son. Then, “I told Adam that I saw the-the footprints and hoof prints from the reindeers and-and that in the morning the cookies are always eaten and so are the carrots out on the lawn for the reindeers,” all in a breathy rush.

I remembered pleading similar arguments to my classmates as a child. They were, of course, refuted by the sort of wise-guy know-it-alls that one can find in any school. After fifth-grade Christmas break, I’d made the mistake of saying “I saw him,” to Trevor, leader of the Santa deniers. This had earned me the reputation of being a pants-on-fire class liar for two weeks, until Trevor pooped himself on a field trip bus, with the resulting gossip vector replacing my smeared reputation atop the hierarchy of elementary school scandal.

As my son recounted the day’s events I wondered if I should have felt guilty for continuing my mother’s tradition of having the children put carrots outside on Christmas Eve. Once we were asleep, she’d sneak out in heavy leather men’s boots with a dowel carved to leave cloven-footprints in the snow and nibble bites out of the vegetables. The first year I had done so, I had felt a moment of solidarity across time with my mom, as I bit into a carrot to find it, naturally, frozen. It was cold that night, and the bitter chill of winter air right before it snows returned me, as it always did, to the Christmas Eve that had altered the trajectory of my life.

All the kids were asleep upstairs, but Dad, in his winter coat, plucked only me from my bed before rushing out onto the deck in the freezing night. Later, I would come to realize this was likely more due to the brandy snifter in his other hand than a true desire to share the moment with me alone, though his need to share it with someone was palpable. Just as I was about to ask what was going on, he said, “Look! Look! Look!” pointing at the sky.

It was not a plane, it was not a flying saucer, it was not Saint Elmo’s fire. Bleary-eyed though I was, what I saw was a boxy, sleigh-like conveyance being borne through the sky by a number of creatures, illuminated not by any sort of traditional avionic lighting, but mostly visible as the full moon glinted off steel rails and the brass bells and clasps of the harness rigging it all together. I knew they were bells, because I could hear them, barely audible over the distance, jingling through the night air.

We watched until it was gone, and in the morning I asked him if it had been a dream, but he just looked at me. Mid-morning, after we all opened our presents, I heard him on the phone in the study, calling every airport in the area asking about ultralight aircraft and UFO sightings. He had grown quite agitated by the time he dialed up the nearby Air Force base.

My grades and Dad’s business had suffered over the following year, until it was suddenly Christmas Eve again. When Mom answered the door to let Santa in, even the youngest among us knew who it was, but we played along, too conscious of the magic in the air to do anything but bask in it and play along. Magic, it turned out, wasn’t something you could find if you went looking for it, but rather came along when you least expected it. More than that, though, it was something you could make yourself.

I knew that in a few days, I’d answer the door and let him in for my own children. Later, after they had gone to bed, we’d bundle up and take snifters of brandy out into the night to look at the sky.