Taking a child to see Santa Claus at the local mall is possibly one of the most fun events you can participate in as a parent. It’s not only fun for the child to see this God-like figure in person, but it’s fun for the adults to witness as well. The look in your toddler’s eye when he or she rounds the corner and sees Santa is worth all the bad things you’ve been part of as a parent: the messy diapers, the vomit, the back-talking, the frustrating "crying all night for no real reason" phase…suddenly that all goes away. And as a parent, you’re now left with just a huge grin on your face because you are seeing your child’s true happiness. For a child to see Santa in the flesh must generate the same sort of awe-inspired feeling that we as adults get when we see our favorite rock star or movie star. To a toddler, Santa is this larger-than-life personality who makes the impossible happen in this mysterious and miraculous way, and now to see him in a public place like in front of a JC Penney’s or something must be a complete mind trip for a first-timer. Little boys are screaming "You rock, dude!" and holding autograph books, the toddler girls are lifting their Hello Kitty shirts and shouting, "Santa, I want to have your Cabbage Patch Kids"…it’s bedlam. I think these kids have a similar reaction that my wife would have if George Clooney were sitting in the middle of the mall and allowing fans to sit on his lap.
(As a quick side note here…at any other time in the year if you were in the mall and some strange man asked your child to come sit on his lap, you’d call the police. But give him a white beard and a red suit during the final month of the fiscal year, and suddenly it’s OK somehow. Go figure.)
It is equally fun for me to watch the other parents sweat nervously as they try to get their children to sit up straight, tell Santa what they want and smile nice for the picture. The parents act as if Santa will surpass their children’s house if they don’t say and do the right things. And as a result, the child – who was very excited at the idea of doing this at first – is now utterly freaked out. Santa asks what the little child wants, the child inevitably forgets due to nervousness, and the mother is doing that loud-whisper thing from the sidelines: "Tell him you want a new train and a video game! Tell him! Go on. Tell him! OH, and don’t forget the big-screen plasma television and new Lexus SUV for Mommy." Then the child gets even more scared, decides this isn’t going well and needs to end, and starts wiggling and wanting down off of the fat man’s lap. The mother, in her high-rising "Mom Jeans", self-knitted reindeer sweater (she opted out of her self-knitted apple sweater for just this occasion) and Santa hat covering her frosted helmet hair, will say "No, no, no. Sit still while Mommy takes your picture" as she hopes against hope that her now Prozac-needing child will smile a big, beautiful grin for the keepsake photo that they want to send out for this year’s Christmas card. Instead, the end result is a glossy 8 X 10 of the little kid crying his eyes out with a snot bubble protruding from his/her nose, his/her mouth contorted to where it looks like Sylvester Stallone calling for Adrienne at the end of Rocky and, in the center of the picture, a big wet spot on Santa’s lap where the frightened child pissed all over his or her hero. Then one of Santa’s helpers gives the permanently traumatized child a candy cane to make it all better, the next child walks up for his turn, and the cycle starts all over again. Rinse and repeat.
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