Exorcising the Ghosts of Christmas Present

This hasn’t been much of a season for Christmas stories. No one would mistake last week’s news for “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Never has our addiction to anger seemed so grotesquely consuming. Never have the Whos down in Whoville felt so fed up and demoralized.

And yet it’s stubborn, this need to believe in a better, larger spirit, which may be why an unexpected glimmer of its existence felt so welcome the other day.

‘Twas about a week before Christmas when that modest moment of redemption was visited upon a retired aerospace worker and sometime Santa named Dick Goodman.

The story goes out to those who long for ourselves as we used to be.

“I’ve been a Santa for 12 years, out in Pasadena,” Goodman began by way of background. “I come in by firetruck. I sit in front of this little gingerbread house the stores have on weekends. You can buy a Christmas card with a Polaroid of Santa for five bucks.”

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These words sound mildly hilarious coming from him, because Goodman, a grandpa from La

Habra, is one of those guys who looks exactly like Santa Claus. He has a fluffy white beard and rosy cheeks and eyes that crinkle with laughter. The job, once a whim, has become a serious hobby. He owns two $400 Santa suits, top of the line.

Being Santa has revealed a side of himself that delights him. When he and his wife took a cruise to Alaska, kids followed him all over the ship, demanding to know whether he was The Guy.

“I’m as close as you get,” he finally told them, feeling utterly truthful.

He can’t tell the story without crinkling his eyes.

Anyway, in September, his wife noticed a newspaper ad: A supplier of mall Santas needed applicants. She suggested that Goodman might enjoy full-time Santa-hood. He applied, though a stint at their Santa school was a condition of hiring.

Unfortunately, the more Goodman saw and heard, the more troubled he became by the big-time Santa world. Every nuance of instruction, it seemed, involved legal liability.

You couldn’t smooth out a little girl’s dress for a photo. You couldn’t promise a present, lest the parents be hurting for cash. You couldn’t ask a child, “Did you do all your homework this year?” You had to ask something less potentially loaded, such as, “Do you brush your teeth?”

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Goodman began to wonder whether something wasn’t being lost here. The Santa-like spirit that had come so easily when he didn’t dwell on it suddenly felt terribly complex. Who knew there were so many pitfalls and angles?

“It had always seemed easy,” he puzzled. “Either a kid had been naughty or he’d been nice.”

Then, around Thanksgiving, the agency sent him to a mall. They had closed the doors and charged admission, promising customers one picture with Santa per family. But the film was shoddy, and there were so many retakes that the mall closed before everyone got their photos. People clamored; the minimum-wage elves yelled back like creeps.

In the chaos, Goodman tried to offer rain checks. Outraged, the customers accused Santa of being argumentative. He quit a day later.

“Being Santa,” he decided sadly, “ain’t what it used to be.”

*

This would be the end of the story but for that small moment I witnessed weeks afterward. Goodman had returned to his weekend job and the occasional special appearance; as a favor to a friend, he’d agreed to visit an elementary school.

He was on his way to the parking lot, speaking wearily of the world’s changes, when he passed by the playground. It was a California December, unseasonably warm. He’d loosened his red coat and pulled out his car keys when a kindergartner on a swing set saw him. “Hey!” the boy called, and the air stilled in palpable shock.

“Santa!” A half-dozen kids froze on the jungle gym.

“Santa!” A dozen more leaped from the slide and ran to the chain-link fence.

“SANTA!” And now they were shrieking wildly and Goodman stopped. Turned. And called “Merry Christmas” in a spirit of sudden, preposterous hope that spoke not merely to the children but to all of us.

As we used to be.

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Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is [email protected].