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Alias Santa Claus
Rebecca Sicree on Childhood Encounters with a Christmas Icon
It was after dark on Christmas Eve, and my younger sister Jessie and I were arguing. I was telling her that Santa Claus did not exist. She was stubbornly refusing to believe me.
There was a knock at the door.
"Girls, come here," my dad called, with an odd expression on his face. "Someone wants to see you." So we went to the door.
And there he was.
"Ho! Ho! Ho!" he chortled. "Merry Christmas! I was at your neighbor's party and thought I'd stop by. What would you little girls like for Christmas?"
Jessie's face lit up with excitement. She said that she wanted a Chrissy doll with hair that grew. I stood and stared. Our guest seemed to think I was afraid of him. Finally, I stammered that I wanted a Chrissy doll, too. "I'll see what I can do," he assured us and left. Jessie turned on me with a look of fierce triumph.
"See?" she said. "I told you so!"
My parents burst out laughing.
Both of us had Chrissy dolls the next morning.
I was very, very confused.
Rebecca Sicree writes from Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. She and her family attend Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church in nearby State College. She and her husband Andrew have ten children, six of whom are now adults.
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more on Christmas from the online archives
31.6—November/December 2018
on Childhood Encounters with a Christmas Icon by Rebecca Sicree
22.8—November/December 2009
on the Real Men Behind the Christmas Carol by Michael Baum
28.6—Nov/Dec 2015
on the Deepest Longings of the Restless & the Lonely by William Graddy
more from the online archives
19.1—January/February 2006
on Death & Seven of the Last Words of Socrates by Graeme Hunter
22.3—April 2009
Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by J. Daryl Charles
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
A Critical Memoir of Thomas Merton at Gethsemani Abbey by Patrick Henry Reardon
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