By now, some or you have realized I take a "road not taken," as Frost put it, to some important issues of life. Actually, despite most people obsessing to be part of the gang, my daddy always made the mistake of reminding me to "Think for Yourself!"
This could not be more true of my views of Christmas Eve and Santa Clause!
I grew up in Atlanta--more specifically, Clarkston, about 20 minutes (before urban sprawl) east of Five Points--which happens to have the Southeast regional Sears & Roebuck store. It was big and it was THE most important place once December came for my brother and me. The first big event was the arrival of the Sears Christmas Catalogue! We had to control our tempers as to who would get to look at it first. Christmas is no time for a brother fight.
We knew that the budget was tight and we could only get so much. Momma and Daddy would tell us the amount as soon as we rushed to them with all kinds of things we wanted because we had turned down the page.
That was an early lesson in money management: pick out what you wanted (always at lest 10 items lusted over) / begin to narrow it down to what counts most / say your prayers it was inside the money limit / if it was a little over try to put on a good "beg face" so you stood a chance / you would never know for sure if you would get it. Therefore, prepare to be disappointed which sometimes happened.
I got to thinking about that "Santa Clause and Raindeer pulling sleigh stuff" and figured it had to be a good story, but there was no way a fat little man in one sleigh could do the job required all over the world. The more I thought about it, the more the real story started coming to me.
It was true that Christmas morning would have toys under the tree. It was true that someone had to get them there. It was not true that parents would mess with something as important as this. There just had to be an explaination better than that stupid story all the other children were telling. It made no sense to me----so quietly I discovered the truth.
The Truth: The Sears Man brings my toys from the downtown store with a big tractor trailer truck!!!!!
Yep, the other children and even my stupid little brother could believe that stuff about raindeer and sleighs, but I went to bed on Christmas Eve watching the walls for bigger lights than a car turning the corners and--if it had a diesel engine sound--the Sears Men had taken care of me!!!
There was only one problem: We were in eyesight of Stone Mountain and, at the time, it had a bright white/red beacon turning on top to direct airplanes to the Atlanta Airport--hub of the Southeast. That "set of headlights" came around about every 30 seconds so don't be fooled. The real deal would have the deep sound of a diesel engine accompanying it! Don't be fooled.
I never made it long enough into the evening, despite all the excitement, to see and hear that combo of diesel and lights, but I knew it happened before I got up the next day because the stuff under the tree and in the room was just like we saw for real on that special night daddy and momma took us downtown to muse through the whole floor of toys--only seen before in the catalogue.
Believe in Santa if you want. I stick by my modern day theory---It's really the Sears Man!
PLEASE don't ever go out of business! Betcha won't now that you've combined with K-Mart! Still the K-Mart Man doesn't have the ring of the Sears Man, my hero!
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