Santa Stories

Okay, so, a quick anecdote from the world of the working woman:

So, the place that I work is complicated, trying to do so many things at once. We sell baked goods, we sell pastries, we sell muffins. We sell breakfast, lunch, and dinner, sometimes all at the same time. We sell decorated cakes and pastries and specially ordered giftbaskets. And we sell many other things that fall under the heading of "giftware." This is all the stuff that is set up all around the store: mugs, platters, little figurines, nutcrackers, teapots, all kinds of high priced brick-a-brac that people browse through and buy. It is unbelievable to me how people can come in and just start spending hundreds of dollars on such things at the drop of a hat. For example, today a woman came and bought over 800 dollars worth of giftware, threw in a couple of decorated cakes and then to top it all off bought a boxed lunch. But one of the items she bought was this doll-like figurine that we had had sitting near the cash register for quite some time. I think it was supposed to portray Santa Claus, but it was the ugliest, most wizened looking, spindly-legged little troll of a Santa that mortal eyes had ever beheld. It was as if you took Santa out of the North Pole and forced him to live in the mines of Moria for a few hundred years, this is what he would look like when he came out. The doll thing must have cost over a hundred dollars, but this lady bought it, for whatever reason. But then, it's up to good old Shannon, the lowly drudge, to find some way to box this monstrosity up. So one of the managers hands me a full sheet cake box, which is probably almost three feet long on the long side. I try to roll troll Santa every which way and find that the only way he comes close to fitting, which isn't very close, is lying flat on his back in this brown cardboard box. Both of his hands are still reaching out, kind of suspended in mid-air, gasping for life. I am struck by the humor of troll Santa lying in his little cardboard casket as I seal him in with crushed up newspaper. It makes me think of Edgar Allan Poe meets Nietzche, Cask of Amontialldo meets Twilight of the Idols. "Santa is dead! And we have killed him!"

Here's another story I didn't plan to tell when I started, but is really quite...well, quite something. We were listening to the Christian station on the radio in the car with my family the other night, and this woman starts going on about how Santa Claus is "exalting himself against Christ." He's claiming to be omniscient because he claims to see when you're sleeping, to know when you're awake. And he's trying to take the focus of Christmas away from Christ and get children to worship commercialism. I would like to be able to believe that this was some kind of parody, but this is not that kind of radio station. So my response was, "What is this woman smoking?" This is one of the things that I don't enjoy about evangelicalism. What kind of religion says, "You know, I think what we need to decry, I think the true poison in our culture, is the presence of this big jolly guy who gives presents to little kids. That's what we need to get rid of! And to hell with childhood hunger and the destruction of the environment! We really need to resolve this Santa issue!" Awesome.

And don't even get me started on Halloween...