We are now in the homestretch to Christmas and here I sit, enthroned at the center of the Mall, prepared to confess the wishes of children. I'll do this right up to the last electronic beep of the last cash register closing on a sale, under conditions only slightly less hectic than a Tokyo rush-hour in the subway, while a photographer in a green elf costume snaps pictures. I wear a red velveteen suit with white trim that has mange. The beard, luckily, hooks over my ears -- no spirit gum -- and the wig of white polyester sits on my head like a splattered meringue under a limp dunce cap. Ecce homo, at slightly above minimum wage.
As I ready myself and watch the Mall fill up I wonder how many of these nomadic shoppers, these Magi with unclear stars, feel deeply in themselves this powerful coming together of nature's death and salvation's birth? Probably not many; even I have trouble keeping it in focus, and it's my job. We all seem too busy these days to feel much awe and reverence, and this season especially can make us aware of how much time we have not spent paying attention to life and the people we say we love, how much of ourselves we haven't really given.
So we try to redeem ourselves through rituals of given things, formulas of generosity, and make up for all the neglect caused by our catch-all excuse, "I'm just trying to make a living." And in its own way this rush to clear the deficits brings us a kind of grace and reprieve. The impulse to gift and be gifted, to present ourselves, leavens us if only because for the time that it takes us to pick the gift, wrap it, give it, and wish the other well we adjourn the endlessly finicky tinkering with our egos and think about what another may want or need. For that moment we share breath and bread with someone else and keep in touch. For that moment we stop letting our insecurities impeach us.
It's all so complicated, so adult. Luckily, for all of us, there are the children.
I ask the photographer if he's ready. He grins and uncaps his lens. I get out of my rickety gilt chair, turn on the tape of tinny Christmas music, and unhook the orange nylon rope that separates the magic kingdom of Santa from the madding crowd. Even as my rear-end hits the chair I have a child in my lap, and while he chatters on about the latest martial arts super-hero, and the elf clicks away, I listen and smile. The beard won't show it, unattached as it is to my skin, but the smile is there nonetheless, given as payment for his untooled enthusiasm.
As I release him, there is another child, and then another. It is a constant stretch all day, my ears filling like cisterns with the rain of their choices. Of course it wears thin after a while, and there's the usual passel of whiners, brats, and mutes. When the second Santa comes on for the evening shift I greet my echo with relief. But I know that's only temporary. Dressed, fed, I walk back to the magic kingdom and watch the line of kids squirm as they wait to present their bids and billet-doux to Santa. So many children, so many chances. Grace for all of us will come from such multitudes.
(October 1995)