Here Comes Santa

My earliest memory of Christmas is sitting in the back of my family’s minivan, the weather outside frigid, and on the radio there was a fake news program playing.

“Well there has been another sighting of old Santa Claus boys and girls,” the overly excited announcer said. “It looks like he is heading west. Rudolph looks amazing.”
I sat there peering out, my nose growing numb on the cold window, hoping with all my soul that I too would be able to catch a glimpse of Old Saint Nick.

A few years later I learned that the radio program was fake, and I also realized that the concept of one man delivering gifts to millions of people in one night was a little far-fetched.
I forgave my parents for their lies, it seems that the general rule on this one is that lying to children is OK in the case of Christmas, but I still mourned the loss of that Christmas magic I used to feel leading up to the 25th of December.

Coming to the Marshall Islands, I had no idea what to expect around this holiday of tinsel.
My students started filling me in throughout my first five months here. They told me about the dancing that everyone will do, they told me about the parades where candy is flung out like hail from the sky and they told me about the singing.

I was excited to experience all of the new aspects of Christmas in an entirely new culture. However, as little as I would like to admit it, as this month approached I began to feel pangs of longing for the old Oregon Christmas I was used to. I began to get emails from people back home talking about their new Christmas trees and how they were excited that egg-nog lattes were out again.

I started remembering every Christmas in my house: we wake up late and then crowd around the tree in our pajamas and socks and open the gifts one by one with our steaming teas and coffees hovering below our lips. It takes hours. I thought, “how nice would it be if Santa Claus were real?” then all the people on this world would be a little bit more connected than before. Maybe some semblance of Christmas spirit would permeate things. I would be just one man
away from Oregon.

Alas, I had learned long ago that Santa Claus was a myth and Christmas spirit was usually attributed to a little too much nog in the egg-nog.

The other day though a Christmas miracle happened that made me turn a 180 — Santa Claus came to my house.

I came in the door and there he was standing. His beard was full, curly and white and his cheeks were rosy. He held a sprig of holly in his hand and blue and red lights shot out from his beard. He was dancing by bending his hips and thrusting a fisted hand to the sky like he was calling for revolution. He was 14 inches high and was made in China.

It was a Christmas miracle.

Or a strange side-effect of globalization.

Either way, here was irrefutable proof that Santa Claus was showing up all over the world.
Things are rarely what they seem. Magic shows are invisible wires and trap-doors, coral atolls don’t float, they are just clinging onto a sinking volcano and Santa Claus doesn’t drive his sleigh of flying reindeer all around the world in one night.

He does get everywhere though — or at least to the Marshall Islands — and that is pretty amazing to me. It makes me feel close to home in a place as far from it as I can get, and that is Christmas magic if I ever knew it.

The love you give comes back in the end.
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