This was the first Christmas in a long time that I didn't utterly hate. BC, aka, before Clementine, I found every holiday after Halloween pushy and inconvenient at best & greedy and depressing at worst. The pressure of getting family members gifts was as much fun as simply burning the money I didn't have to spend on other people's presents. When tradition simply becomes expectation- it's not 'the spirit of Christmas'- it's a pay off, a bribe with a bow.
But this Christmas some deeply buried, long-cold pilot light was re-ignited in my coal-black holiday soul. I craved a cozy tree with charming decorations, lights in the windows, mistletoe over head and Johnny Mathis coaxing hope and love back into my heart. I forced the husband to go along with my Grinch re-awakening and he lit the place up like Vegas. And I remembered, in a shocking fit of sentiment, my childhood Christmases.
We had no money growing up and my parents struggled mightily with multiple jobs and each other but something came over us all right after Thanksgiving. We decorated our little run down house within an inch of it's life. By the time we finished, the decorations and lights probably held our house together. We wore out Julie Andrews' Christmas album until the needles turned to stubs and Julie started to sound like she was begging us to give her a break.
Even worse, we were such nerdy little theater fags, my sisters and I would rehearse Christmas Eve. We'd write scripts, complete with dialogue, lines like- "Elizabeth, wake up! Do you hear what I hear?". We'd practice how we'd sleep on the narrow staircase leading down from our rooms to the living room, where our ceiling-scraping tree groaned under the overdose of shedding satin-wrapped Christmas balls, which were buried under layers of cotton-candy-esque gobs of 'snow' draped over the branches, which turned out to be asbestos-laden fiberglass or something equally carcinogenic. They don't make that stuff anymore... perhaps not even in China.
I've played along with Christmas ever since then, but begrudgingly so- as if it was a relationship I was too lazy to end, so I just phoned it in year after year, wondering if I'd ever be brave enough to just ignore Christmas until it went away for good. Until I became a mother.
While I knew that my kid was still too young to understand Christmas or even simply grasp the concept of an older, bearded man in belted red lounge-wear breaking into our home while we sleep, I wanted to create traditions for us as a family to feel pressured to honor year after year, no matter how much we all would eventually grow to hate them. One of these traditions is a visit to Santa, which more resembles a torture rite of passage that parents exact on their kids, with professional photographers dressed as elves conveniently on hand to commemorate our children's agony. When I really think about it, it's insane how otherwise devoted and proud parents laugh and coo as their children scream and sob in terror on some oddly bearded stranger's red velour lap while someone photographs the whole sordid mess.
And then I got a kid, and I joined that club of parents who simply must do this. As a child we'd get all excited and dressed up, go into the city, marvel at the store windows and the tree at Rockefeller Center and then go and weep on Santa's lap at Macy's in Herald Square, then go to the Rockettes and Nativity show at Radio City. We'd freeze and cry and be exhausted- our beater car would inevitably break down on the way home, once in the actual middle of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, our furious dad would swear this was the last effing time, ever. Then we'd do it again the next year.
Christmas in LA in 2013 means you go to the Grove, try not to let the falling man-made snow get in your mouth or eyes then wait for four hours to sit on Santa's knee. If you are white. As a white person, I am not slogging white people for doing any of this, it's what you do when you have a kid and you want them to have a feel for Christmas despite the golf club weather.
So we did it. We dressed up Clementine and let her wear her red rubber boots with her tights and dress and we showed her all the lights and decorations and trolley cars full of musicians and we waited to see Santa. She found it all underwhelming and really only enjoyed the fountains. Until she met Santa- a truly incredible man who took the time and care and knew exactly how to not make a baby cry. I wanted to tip him for his sweetness towards her, but that felt creepy. The photo is fine, she just looks a bit annoyed and baffled at the whole crazy scene.
Then something came over me and I simply had to take her to Black Santa. Perhaps it was because I read about the beloved Black Santa at the Crenshaw mall but mostly it's because my daughter is black and because Megyn Kelly, the Edward R. Murrow of Fox News declared that Santa is white. That inspired me, my sister, husband and nephew to get Clemmie all dressed up again and head on down to Crenshaw Mall on Christmas Eve.
It was hard to find a parking spot, it was crazy hot out and a long walk to the front door. It probably took 45 minutes to navigate Macy's, find the up escalator, walk deeper and deeper into the mall where we finally spotted the big-ass tree and massive white leatherette chair surrounded by elves on the clock. Clementine couldn't have cared less about any of this, except for the escalators. She wanted to ride them up and down over and over.
The biggest difference between Crenshaw Mall's Santa-land and the Grove's Santa-land was access to Santa. At the Grove, Santa is ensconced deep inside a massive cottage-shaped lair made entirely of fake candy, baked goods and ice cream and of course tons of wrapped presents, in case we forgot we were inside a shopping mall conveniently full of crap to buy. You don't see Santa until you are asked which photo package you are willing to shell out the dough for. Signs everywhere warn you to keep smart phones deeply hidden. No stealing selfies with white Santa.
At Crenshaw mall we could see clearly see Santa, since he was completely exposed to the mall elements... as we descended on the down escalator. And that was when I easily saw that Black Santa was not black. Maybe Megyn Kelly was right after all. My heart sank as we got closer to Santa-land, despite the slight concession that under an obviously fake white beard, this Santa was more of a South American brown.
By this time my sister and nephew were laughing so hard they were crying as they asked what I wanted to do now. We quietly discussed that it seemed pretty racist to come all this way and not get a photo with Santa because he wasn't black enough. As I tentatively approached the head elf, my mind raced with how exactly to ask for Black Santa without sounding like a reverse-racist.
"Um, hi. Is there... another Santa... somewhere else in this mall?"
The head elf, a black man in his 50s eyed me quickly with no emotion.
"You mean Black Santa? He doesn't come on until 1:30."
It was 11:30 and the clock was winding down to Clemmie's iron-clad naptime which is at noon. We could wait until 1:30 but she'd be such a raving banshee by then that we'd probably get kicked out of Black Santa-land.
So, I ponied up the 15 bucks and walked her over to Brown Santa who spoke no English and had zero baby savy. He just grabbed Clemmie, plopped her in his lap and she FREAKED out. I even sat with her and put my arm around Santa as if to indicate he was okay after all but she screamed holy hell, reaching for her father who froze beside the camera, smiling inexplicably at her misery, which only compounded her fury.
For some reason I grinned like an idiot, as if to compensate for the howling grimacing Clementine, forever commemorated kicking out of her red rubber boots and reaching futilely for her father's arms. The photo elf showed me the photos, all of them ridiculous and heart breaking. I picked the one that was most flattering to me.
At least we had four escalator rides before getting out of the mall. Those wild mechanical rides made her forget all about Santa... until next year.
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