Merry Christmas, Mr. McClannahan

By Rory McClannahan

Christmas is really for children.

And what is it about childhood that makes Christmas so special? Sure, there is the gifts, but those in themselves aren’t enough to make even the oldest of us smile. There is the lights and the food and the decorations and the family and the friends and the optimism that there indeed can be peace on earth and good will toward men.

Yeah…I don’t think so. Christmas is special because of magic and only children and those with child-like hearts truly believe the spells cast are real. This is where the secular and religious aspects of Christmas are similar – they rely upon faith.

The key to Christmas magic is an old gentleman who wears red and slides down chimneys to leave toys for good girls and boys. That’s Santa Claus, of course, also known as St. Nicholas and Sinterklass and a dozen other names. Just about every culture has a benevolent gentleman who delivers gifts to deserving children. He is the only ancient figure who has taken a place as a modern mythic figure. As adults, we know that Santa Claus does not exist, but we acknowledge the spirit of goodwill that he embodies as something tangible. We know there is no such way a fat guy in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer could make it around the world in a night. There are so many holes in the legend; you can look up on the internet how it is impossible for someone to fly around the earth delivering gifts. Flying reindeer? Ha!

Santa Claus as we know him was a creation to sell more soda and greeting cards. The modern legend of the jolly elf comes from the poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” written by Clement C. Moore in 1823. It was with its publication that Christmas became a secular holiday. That Jesus was supposedly born on Christmas Day is fine, although hardly arbitrary seeing as the early church co-opted a day in December that pagans of the day celebrated Yule. Regardless of its origins and religious meanings, Santa Claus became the primary symbol of the holiday.

And with the myth of Santa Claus came the idea of telling children that a magical old guy was their benefactor. It’s a myth that parents from the 19^th century until now have perpetuated. And even as adults, we tend to want to believe in Santa, even if he is just a symbol.

Some people don’t buy into the Santa myth and refuse to perpetuate the lie. And some of us straddle both sides of the myth. I would be all-in on the cynical side of Christmas if it wasn’t for the Christmas when I was 7 years old.

I came into the world in the mid 1960s, the third of three boys. By the time I had really become aware of Christmas, my two older brothers had already had their Santa moments. My oldest brother, Shawn, was very much aware that it was Mom and Dad who laid out all those presents in the middle of the night. My next oldest brother, Kerry, still had a slight desire to believe in Santa but he had figured out the logic and it didn’t add up. While they may not have gone out of their way to tell me the truth of the matter, their talk of St. Nick had a mocking quality to it – a way to make fun of me without me really knowing the reason why. My brothers, like anyone’s siblings, really didn’t need a reason to torture me. It’s just something that older brothers do.

My first Christmas memory had to be from when I was about three or four, maybe older. I place my age at that because we were living in a rented house in Los Alamos. This was the house that my brother Kerry nearly burned down. Us three boys all shared a large room and one day while playing, Kerry tied a string to his bed like the fuse at the beginning of Mission: Impossible. He lit the string and the flame traveled quite quickly and soon his bed was on fire. I had been chastised by my parent for being somewhat of a tattle-tale. For some reason, they valued me keeping a secret against my brothers rather than having a convenient spy.

So when I went into the den to announce that Kerry had lit his bed on fire, they gave me a hard time for snitching on my brother. When I was insistent that maybe someone should do something about Kerry’s bed being on fire, my Dad finally made his way to the bedroom and discovered the flames. The fire was put out and Kerry was given a whipping that I’m sure he still has not forgotten – I know I haven’t.

This also was the house that was haunted. At lease that’s what I believed then and I guess sort of still feel that way. Being I was an odd kid, there is a fairly good chance that it was just me. To some people, an active imagination could be seen as a blessing; and I suppose it is if you can come to a point distinguishing what is real and what isn’t. It takes time and experience, though, and my young mind could not always grasp what was imagined and what wasn’t. To me, my childhood seemed to have been filled with constant nightmares. Fifty years on, I still remember the ones I had in that house and have not had since.

But that first Christmas I remember was different. When my brothers and I woke up early and made our way out to the living room in our pajamas and terry cloth robes – mine was a royal blue – we found three identical sets of Hot Wheels tracks. Even better, in addition to the regular cars that were powered through a small house with two spinning foam wheels that would spit out the cars like a baseball pitching machine was the new line of cars that year called Sizzlers. Each car had a rechargeable battery that was juiced through a charger that looked like a gas pump. You had to insert the “fuel” hose into a hole in the car and then hold down a button on top to charge the battery.

We had cars running on those tracks for days on end, but there was never any doubt who got those Hot Wheels – it was Mom and Dad. Santa, even then, was mostly kind of a joke. When handing out gifts, someone would jokingly say that “this one is from Santa” but we all knew it was from the parents. Sure, I believed he existed, but he never really brought good presents.

The Hot Wheels Christmas, as it has come to be known in family lore, was only one of the few that we spent at home. Normally, we would go to either one or the other set of grandparents houses for the holiday. Like other families, the annual ritual was to spend Thanksgiving with one set of grandparents and Christmas with the other set. While Christmas was occasionally spent at home, I don’t think I had spent a Thanksgiving in my own home until I was in my 40s.

The year I was 7 we went to our Grampa and Gramma Mac’s house in Corrales. My grandfather was a plumber by trade and the house he built close to the river was a marvel. It was an adobe abode with high ceilings in which centipedes were known to fall from.

It wasn’t a modern home in any sense. There were no hallways, it was just one long house. On one side was the guest bedroom in which our whole family would sleep. It fed into a large open space that held the kitchen, dining and living room. There were no walls but the living room and kitchen areas were divided by a giant fireplace that opened on each side.

Everything in the house was big – a giant picture window that framed the Sandia Mountains, a big fireplace, a tall grandfather clock and the most wonderfully huge book shelf filled with dusty volumes. At the time, I believed the books had belonged to my grandmother, but learned in my teens that the books were acquired by my grandfather, who I suspect did not go to school beyond his early teens. As a 7 year old, I worshipped my grandfather and he showed me a kindness and respect that no one ever had. He went out of his way to take me on errands with just him and me. At the Piggly-Wiggly he paid for me to take a turn in the bounce-house and at K-mart he bought me a bag of warm cashews of my very own. He never talked to me like I was a kid and I always appreciated that. He also had a wicked sense of humor and his jokes were subtle. If we were lined up to take a photo, Grampa Mac would tells us to lick our lips. Family photos taken by him at the time show us all with our tongues sticking out.

Grampa Mac was tall and thin, but I wouldn’t want to get into it with him. When he was a young man, he worked on the railroad and developed a deceptive strength. His eyes were an icy blue and his hair was light and cut very short. When I picture him, he is always wearing his Levi Strauss work pants with the cuff hung up on the side of his work boot. His shirts were homemade and riddled with burn holes from his hand-rolled cigarettes.

When my grandfather was about the same age I was at the time, his younger brother Vance died of lock jaw after stepping on a rusty nail. His father – my great-grandfather – died in the flu epidemic of 1919 not long after Grampa Mac was born. My Great-Gramma Ruth had remarried and although no one really talked about it, I came to sense that this fellow was a mean drunk who would beat my grandfather. That fellow died and when my grandfather was in his teens, he and Gramma Ruth made their way in the world together. Even before I was born, Gramma Ruth lived with her son and my Gramma Mac.

Gramma Ruth was a sweet, frail old lady. Except not really. To us kids, she was the perfect grandmother. When we visited, each of us would sneak off to her little house across the compound from the big house and listen to her stories, eat rice pudding and watch phony wrestling and Mitch Miller on her black and white television. I loved that little house because it was always warm and comfortable – it was a place of sanctuary in which no one would ever make fun of a little boy who cried a lot, wet the bed frequently and suffered from nightly terrors. Every year on our birthdays Gramma Ruth would bake us a special birthday cake and in my closet now I have a quilt that she made for me when I was a child. Linus had his security blanket and I have my great-grandmother’s quilt, which has provided me security through many hard times.

Gramma Ruth’s house had many photos and paintings but I remember most a print of the famous painting “Grace” by Rhoda Nyberg. The other wall decoration I loved was a print of dogs playing poker. It was a perfect contrast for my great-grandmother. Sure, she was a sweet old lady whose faith was seemingly unshakeable, but she also named all of the cats she ever owned Fritz so she would never forget their names. She had a wonderful sense of humor and was tough as nails.

Gramma Ruth was also very, very, very hard of hearing.

“Hi Gramma Ruth,” we would say.

“What?”

“Hi Gramma Ruth!”

“I’m sorry,” she would say, holding her hand up to her ear.

“HI GRAMMA RUTH!”

“Well, you don’t have to shout at me.”

As well as being deaf, my great-grandmother had arthritis that had bent her body and had knotted and twisted her joints. We were always ordered to be gentle with her, that her frailness could not withstand three boys. Gramma Ruth, like many old people, was extremely fatalistic.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR CHRISTMAS, GRAMMA?!”

“Oh, don’t get me anything. I won’t be around to enjoy it,” she would answer. We would usually get her stationary supplies because she was a prolific letter writer.

The final piece of any visit was my Gramma Mac, a terrifying woman who took no shit from anyone, especially little kids. Gramma Mac had been a dancer when she was young, and from the photos I would look at in the family albums, I am almost convinced that her dancing may have been done in a speakeasy somewhere. She was a comely flapper in those photos, but I only knew her as a respectable mover and shaker in the Republican Party of New Mexico.

On one visit, my Gramma Mac gave me a Teddy Bear to sleep with that had been my grandfather’s when he was a kid. As usual, I wet the bed that night and got screamed at the next morning for ruining a family heirloom. I’m sure my grandmother meant well, but it was simply against her nature to be nurturing.

Gramma Mac also was probably the worst cook ever. That’s being unfair – I did love the homemade noodles she would make, but another bit of family lore is that every meal she cooked was worse than the one before. She would buy her milk fresh from McElhaney’s Dairy and when we arrived for a holiday dinner, she would have us shake the huge glass bottle to mix the milk and the cream then pour the beverage for the meal that would not come for another two hours. We would watch as the milk and cream separated as the cool glass warmed; condensation would form on the side of the glasses and run down to create a wet circle on the tablecloth. Her salads were usually made with weeds that she would cut from the pasture and her meats were cooked with a complete thoroughness that would render them tough and nearly inedible. She would then give me a hard time when I would get a stomach ache before the meal was served.

“What’s wrong with that kid?” she would bark. My Mom would defend me in a way only a mother could.

Several years later, I learned that I wasn’t the only one who found Gramma Mac’s cooking awful. It took time for me to notice that usually after a meal my grandfather would claim there was a job that he was working on that he wanted my father to see and they would disappear. One time, my grandfather invited me to come along and I discovered the joy of eating a meal in a truck stop just off the freeway and miles from Gramma’s cooking. I was sworn to secrecy about these second meals, but I finally understood why my Mom and grandmother were so angry at my Dad and grandfather when they took off.

Although frightening, Christmas at Grampa and Gramma Mac’s house was pretty cool. One reason for the high ceilings, my grandfather said, was so he could fit the biggest Christmas tree in New Mexico in the living room. I’m sure it was no taller that 10 or 15 feet, but through the eyes of a child, it had to at least be 50 feet tall, and it was gaudily decorated with lights and ornaments and tinsel and candy canes and everything. Next to the tree was always the mechanical Santa Claus. At three feet tall, a click of a switch would make Santa move back and forth spreading Christmas cheer. The reticulating Santa had been purchased years before for the storefront of my grandfather’s plumbing business. My brother Kerry loved that little Santa and it is currently in his possession. When he was a kid, Kerry had a burning curiosity about mechanical things, and during Christmas he spent hours studying that Santa. I’m sure he dreamt of a day when he could take it apart and see how it worked.

Even before we arrived in Corrales for the Christmas holiday, my parents must have perceived a problem and had taken steps to address it. Their two older sons were obviously totally and completely aware that there was no Santa Claus, and while there was an unwritten rule to not “blow it” for their youngest child, no such arrangements – spoken or not – had been made that year. My brothers were doing their best to make sure that I let go of any notion of Santa Claus and that came in the form of overt statements of Santa’s non-existence.

“Why would you bother with making a list for Santa? It’s Mom and Dad who set everything up for us,” Shawn would say.

“Only babies still believe in Santa Claus,” Kerry would add.

In my heart, I knew what they said was true, but I still wanted to believe. Was that so wrong? I was freakin 7 years old, for crying out loud.

It’s only as a parent yourself when you begin to realize the hoops your own parents must have gone through during the holiday. I know I always admired my mother for putting up with three boys, but it was only when I had my own kids that I understood the full scope – and price – of putting together a truly special Christmas. That year, I did not hold out hope for anything special. I had two older brothers whose hobbies were to torture me, I was spending Christmas away from home and I was pretty down because any faith that I might have had that Santa Claus really existed was quickly slipping away. Christmas was still Christmas, but the wonder of it all had been tarnished.

So, we arrived with about the amount of bickering that three boys crammed in the back of a 1972 Datsun 510 for a two-hour drive would have. I, of course, was the kid sitting over the hump and I was not allowed to touch either of my brothers during the drive for fear of getting a slug in the arm.

When we arrived, my grandparents two schnauzers Bill and Fred greeted us in their normal way – constant barking. We immediately went into the house and were welcomed by the warmth of the fire in the large fireplace. I didn’t notice any conversations amongst the adults, but I’m sure there must have been some, or at least some knowing looks. I was unaware of any sort of conspiracy and most likely went into the living room to watch TV or read. Or, we were looking for candy and cookies to eat. The grandmothers loved to bake, I assumed, because there was always a cookie to be had. At Christmas there also was peanut brittle and divinity fudge. (I didn’t care much for either and it seemed that the cookies always had nuts in them. As a kid, though, I overcame these drawbacks and went straight for the sugar cookies covered in frosting and little silver confection decorations.)

Shawn was already old enough to where he believed that he should sit and listen to the adult conversations. Either, that or he would head outdoors to walk down to the river being that our family was definitely “not cool.” If it was around Christmas, Kerry would be looking at the ornaments on the tree (as would I) and sit for hours watching the reticulating Santa Claus go back and forth. I was never invited to be around Shawn – he was 13 and as a teenager had no use for small kids.

We weren’t at the house in Corrales for long before it was announced that not all the shopping was done. My father and grandfather had to go to Kmart to get something and I was invited to go along. I don’t know if I was chosen to go along for some special reason or it was just my turn, but I wasn’t about to turn it down. My grandfather and my parents, I think, we’re pretty good about keeping us kids separated. There was less fighting that way.

If you’ve been to Corrales lately, it probably seems like a somewhat rural neighborhood of Albuquerque, a maintained rural transition from the big city to the suburban sprawl of Rio Rancho. In 1972, however, Corrales was well out of town and driving into Albuquerque wasn’t the ordeal it is now. So off we went to Kmart. I liked the home of the Blue Light Special because it was across the road from the giant arrow. For those who know Albuquerque, the giant red arrow has been a landmark since the early 1960s. I was always fascinated by it and longed to get a closer look at what made it stand at that angle, as if it had landed there after being shot from a giant bow. I would speculate in my mind how big of a bow it would take to shoot such an arrow.

I also liked Kmart because not only did it smell like fresh roasted peanuts and cashews, but because it seemed like everything in the world was available there. When I was young – and even still now – there is a family joke about me and that someone needed to be designated to keep an eye on me. From the time I can remember, I had a habit of “wandering off.” It’s not really walking away, but more of a not keeping up with the group. Something might catch my eye and I would have to stop and touch. (That’s the other family joke about me – I had to touch everything.)

In most cases, it was my mother who kept an eye on me and made sure I didn’t get “lost.” She wasn’t there at Kmart and therefore it wasn’t long before I found myself alone. Not alone, really, because there were people all over the place. Even though I was a bundle of insecurities, being lost in a store wasn’t one of them. Perhaps because it happened so often. I rarely panicked, but I will admit that I did panic once when I got locked in a drug store.

I knew my father and grandfather wouldn’t leave without me; or at least I hoped they wouldn’t leave. (It had happened before.) So, I started looking for them in the store. I did the usual search pattern, walking past rows looking for them. At the end of one row, the store had a set up on the latest in closed circuit technology. A camera was hooked into the television monitor showing a different part of the store. On that television set, I saw my father and grandfather. They had to be nearby!

Except… Well, I didn’t know where the camera was. I looked all around where I was standing looking for that camera. If I could find the camera, I could find my ride. Panic started to take me over and it seemed like the store was conspiring with the universe to keep me from finding my father and grandfather.

Before I had a total meltdown, I was found and properly chastised for not staying close. I promised them and myself that I would do so in the future. I didn’t.

We made it back to Corrales in time for a light supper and then we were heading out again. My grandparents, my mom and dad, and us kids were all going to Old Town in Albuquerque to see the luminarias. Each year, the folks in the neighborhood around Old Town set up little bags of sand with lit candles is a sedate holiday display. Thousands of people drive around the neighborhood with their lights off, or even walk around, to enjoy the spectacle.

I can’t ever remember having gone before, so I was pretty excited to see what all the fuss was about. We all loaded into the grandparents’ 1972 Lincoln Continental. Compared to cars today, the Lincoln was a boat and floated above the road like one. Even though there was seven of us, we all fit in that car. Being the smallest, I was given the privilege of sitting up front with my dad and grandfather while the rest of my family rode in the back seat. It was tight, but the four of them fit back there. I was once again riding over the hump, but I was up front. Obviously, none of us was wearing a seat belt.

Off we went and it was wonderful. I got a front row view of the lights and was feeling important anytime my grandfather would tell me to push in the cigarette lighter and carefully hand it to him when it popped out. Soon, we were done seeing the lights and we were heading back to Corrales. My grandfather, though, had a different idea.

“I’m going to drive by and show you some property I’ve been looking at buying,” he said, then headed onto a dirt road. For the next hour, he drove along what must have been on all the dirt roads of Corrales and Rio Rancho.

“It’s just over here,” he would say. Although he spoke with confidence, I thought he must have been lost. I didn’t care, though. It was a great adventure to me, cruising down bumpy country roads. The Lincoln would bounce and shimmy, its suspension easily riding out the rough water. My grandfather was subtly lit by the green glow of the dashboard lights, occasionally looking at me and smiling.

However, there was one person who was not doing well with the waves – my father.

“We should head back,” he said.

“I’ve got one more thing to show you,” my grandfather said.

“I’ve got to pee,” my dad responded.

My grandfather was a man of few expressions, but one of his favorites was a long “Ahhhhhyyyya” that had different meanings depending on the inflection. Most of the time, it signified disdain. That’s what it meant this time and the several more times my father complained about his small bladder. It was a recurring conversation as we drove around in the dark. It was dark and when the conversation would die down to silence, Dad would start up again with going back to the house, we would start the giggle. Once the declaration of “I have to pee” was said, we were all laughing.

But the power of suggestion is such that we all started to feel the need for a place to pee. And still Grampa Mac continued to drive around looking for phantom tracts of property. We eventually convinced him to at least pull over so we all could take care of our business by the side of the road.

Fully relieved, we finally headed back to the house. It was good my grandfather was driving because I was hopelessly lost. Finally, we pulled into the driveway, still high from joking about full bladders. An adult made the comment wondering “if Santa Claus had come by the house yet.” He did have a lot of places to hit that night and maybe he stopped by Corrales early. My brothers gave knowing chuckles, knowing that Santa had not been there because Mom and Dad had been with us the whole evening.

When Grampa pulled the Lincoln into the yard, we all jumped out, rubbing our eyes with sleepiness.

“You boys better get in a get to bed so Santa Claus will show up,” my grandmother said. Inside, we could hear Bill and Fred barking up a storm. Across the compound, we could see that Gramma Ruth’s house was dark. She was old and it was late so we were sure she had gone to bed.

Instead of a darkened house we found … Christmas. The tree was lit up even brighter than ever before. The lights bounced off the colorful ornaments in a burst of joy. Around the living room, strings of lights wound around, flashing and blinking, I don’t know if there was music playing, but there might as well have been because the lights were so loud that all noises were drowned out. The only person in the room was my Grandma Ruth, sound asleep under a blanket in a recliner.

And under and around the tree were presents. Big presents, small presents, oblong presents and square presents. The toys that couldn’t be wrapped were out and if they had lights or noise they were turned on. This is clearly not the tableau we had left. It was obvious that someone had been there and left all these glorious presents. It couldn’t have been Grampa or Gramma, nor Mom and Dad – they had been with us the whole time. Could it have been…? No, my brothers had assured me that he was not real.

Maybe it was Grandma Ruth? That couldn’t be, she was old and arthritic and while she was an incredible woman, there was no way she could have done all this. She was awake by then and claiming that she wanted to see us when we got back but fell asleep.

I don’t know about anyone else, but at that moment I believed Santa Claus had made an early stop on his route just for me. He brought lots of presents, but the best gift was proving my brothers wrong. I could see the looks on my brothers’ faces, they had no idea how this could have happened. Wrapping paper was flying all over the place and the adults were snapping photos and drinking brandy. Grandma Ruth sat with a smile on her face as each of us showed her what we had got.

What’s kind of funny, I really don’t remember what was under the tree for me. I’m not sure if that was the year I got a bicycle, or maybe the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle. I think maybe I got a football uniform, complete with shoulder pads, but I’m not sure.

No one has an ideal childhood. We all could have been raised under the happiest of circumstances, but are still able to recall the most miserable of memories. I know I have hung on to the dramatic misery that comes with the simple existence of a child. As adults, we know harsher pain than most kids have ever experienced, but we still carry the scars of childhood.

But this moment in time, when I was 7 years old is probably the happiest moment in my life, and that was the best Christmas present I’ve ever received. I was an adult before I learned the whole truth of that night. After we had left, my grandparents’ neighbor came over and helped my Gramma Ruth set everything up. Apparently there was a great deal of coordination and timing involved. That’s why we ended up driving all over the high desert around Corrales and Rio Rancho. My grandparents and my parents did a great job keeping everything hidden from three sneaky boys and we had arrived only moments after the job of setting up things had been completed. Grandma Ruth may have been asleep but it was most likely from exhaustion.

Many people have given me many gifts throughout the years, but the best thing I ever got was one evening in which all the troubles of being a kid were put aside and the adults in my life gave me a moment of magic.

From that moment on, I’ve continued to believe that magic exists, even if we have to sometimes create it ourselves.