My Brush With Santa

Let's get this one thing straight, Santa Claus and Jesus Christ have nothing to do with each other. They don't know each other, never did. If I have my facts correct, and I'm pretty sure I do, Santa Claus wasn't even born until well after Jesus' bar mitzvah. Like hundreds of years after.

I'm fairly sure the families didn't even know each other. It probably wasn't as strained as the Montagues and Capulets, or even the Hatfields and McCoys, but I'm fairly positive that the Clauses and Christs never went on joint family vacations. At the very least, what with one group liking the cold and the other the heat, they probably wouldn't even be able to agree on a vacation destination.

This line of thinking all started the other night when I referred to Santa Claus as a douchebag.

You see, every year for one night in early December the shopping district in Santa Monica keeps it's doors open late. With the hopes of getting the local community blotto and ringing up big bills on their credit cards, all of the stores reduce the cost of their overpriced goods, dust off their holiday music CDs and assemble their own private version of holiday cheer - egg nog, frosted cookies, glasses of wine, chunks of cheese and, in the case of the local eye doctor, cups of homemade chili.

Miraculously, Santa Claus finds the time every December in what must be a fairly hectic schedule, to pop on by the local Coldwell Banker Real Estate office and take pictures with the locals. For many years I've enjoyed dropping by with my friends and getting my Polaroid with Santa. After all, it's not often that you get to see that large a celebrity up close and personal.

For the most part I've enjoyed my time with Santa. A bit roley-poley, could probably use an extra few weeks in the gym, maybe even a couple training sessions with Mark Allen, but he seems to be a nice enough fellow. Good hearty laugh, sharp looking outfit (if not a bit dated) and always in a fairly positive mood. You can probably imagine my surprise when all of this changed two years ago.

It was the same evening in early December - the Montana Walk, we call it (mostly because it involves walking up and down Montana Avenue). Catherine and I were new in our relationship and what better way to capture those early months of love than a joint photo with St. Nick.

We roamed up the street, grabbing a cookie here, a brownie there, dipping in and out of stores, until we finally reached the Coldwell Banker. I could see Santa inside, sitting majestically in front of a line of well-wishers. Catherine and I stood in line and, soon enough, we were at the front. Now is our big moment - our brush with celebrity. We approached the big fat fellow excitedly.

Cat went to one side of Santa and I the other. That's where things started going badly. It seemed pretty evident to me from the moment we walked up to Santa that he had a little bit too much holiday cheer focused on my girlfriend. As we neared his chair he immediately pulled Catherine to his leg and put his arm around her with a jolly warmth and a bit too much ho-ho-ho for my liking. I started feeling a little uncomfortable but, hey, this is Santa Claus, I thought to myself. This is what St. Nick does - he makes people feel good. So I let it pass.

As Catherine was sitting on Nicky-boy's left leg, apparently already engaged in conversation with the old fart, I went to plop myself down on his right knee. Call me crazy, but I swear that just as I started to sit down, he straightened out his leg and tried to push me into the christmas tree.

Dick.
I mean....Nick.

I turned my head to look into his face and toss over a "don't fuck with me" stare. Though he was still engrossed in conversation with Catherine - Lord knows what they were discussing so soon and so intently - I could tell that he was giving me the stank-eye from the periphery.

Someone said something from afar. I turned my head to see what it was and - flash! - our photo was taken. HEY!! I wasn't ready! What happened to "1, 2, 3...cheese!"???! Where's the fucking warning?!

We started standing up but apparently Santa wasn't done with Catherine yet. "Wait a minute, young lady," he said, pulling her back onto his leg. Not wanting to leave St. Nuisance alone with my girlfriend, I sat back down on his other knee, ready to quickly kick him in the nether-region if he started acting up.

"Have you been good this year?" the old wackjob asked Catherine.

"Yes, I have" she replied.

Wanting to get in on the conversation, and stake my proverbial claim, I decided to speak up. "No, she hasn't," I said laughingly.

Catherine looked at me with a smile. Nick, on the other hand, turned his head to me in shock. As if this were the first time he actually noticed my body sitting on his knee. "I wasn't talking to you," he said in what I must admit was not a Christmas-like, holiday spirit type of tone.

Well excu-u-u-u-se me, fatman, I thought to myself in utter shock. And, hey, Tubbo, why don't you take your grimy paws off my girlfriend. As a matter of fact, we'll be leaving now, thank you very much.

I grabbed Catherine by the hand, swiped my Polaroid from his photo-taking accomplice and marched on out of the real estate office in a huff as I mumbled all sorts of nasty things about Santa. I ranted about how the curtain on my entire life of holiday cheer had just been torn back revealing a dishearteningly angry delusion. I started thinking back through the years of Santa in my childhood. How my mom was either unusually happy or unusually angry the day after the gifts arrived. How it must've been Santa's fault. Was St Nick making the moves on my mother? I swear, I'll kill the sonofabitch and make venison burgers for dinner when I'm done.

Fast forward two years later to this past Friday night and apparently I still haven't gotten over this life altering experience. I'm standing on Montana Avenue at about 10pm with Catherine and our friend, Amy. The Montana Walk was just winding down and the girls were having some late night frozen yogurt when Amy brought up something about Santa Claus.

Santa is a douchebag, I spat out immediately.

Amy looked at me in disgust. You're going to hell for that one, she said.

Going to hell?! You've got to be kidding me. And I was off.... There's no possible way I could go to hell for recognizing the true douchebag in St. Nick. Santa has no influence over hell. Or heaven, for that matter. He doesn't know Jesus, much less can influence his line of work. Jesus is a good, honest man. Santa is a prick. There's no way that Jesus every met St. Dick and if he did, he'd probably kick him in the shins. Jesus would never be friends with Santa.

I see through Claus' trickery. His whole "have you been good or bad" schtick is a scam. It has nothing to do with daily life or being good. It's a pick up line. It's how Claus gets laid. I'm not buying into it. Not at all. I'm over Santa. If I actually had a chimney I'd light a fire on Christmas eve and burn his ass as he wiggles his way done. And if he gets through, you can bet my lawyer will be waiting to slap a Breaking and Entering suit on his fat face. And while he's serving 5 to 10 up in Rikers Island, I'll be rejoicing in the fact that I've done some good in the world.

Go to hell for calling Santa a douchebag? Puh-lease, it's probably the one thing that's going to get me into heaven!

Now excuse me, I've got to go buy a goddam christmas tree.
Happy holidays.