How Christmas Was Rigged (Again)

It's in the genes.

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Max

On Christmas Day, as I waited for family members to travel to a holiday dinner, I paced the shrubbery line in my brother’s front yard.

Like every year, I’d spent the earlier part of the day preparing — meditating, walking in the forest, breathing — so that I could tolerate the three hours I’d have to navigate my polarized family.

My therapist once told me we don’t choose our family.

Of course, she was right, as cliché as it sounded, and I did love my family, yet this year was a struggle for the entire nation. This year, couples divorced, people left the country, families vowed never to speak again, all over politics.

Here I was back in suburban Atlanta, pacing enormous Golden Globe Arborvitae aligned in perfect symmetry like towering zoo animals.

On the street below, a young boy zoomed down his suburban driveway on a fancy bike and stopped at the curb. He glared at me. “Who are you?” he shouted.

“Well, hello there, little man,” I said, suddenly put at ease because a child spoke to me with more command than an adult. “I’m Frank’s brother, Nik.”

“Oh,” he said, as though disappointed. He looked down, thinking, then lifted his chin again. “Well, guess what? I just found out there is no Santa Claus.”

My thoughts teleported to my son’s seventh Christmas. My former wife had blurted out, “Santa is not real, Len. Better you know now. Your father and I spent all night moving your new bike under the tree, along with your Lego, giant T-Rex, and Buzz Lightyear.”

I felt heartbroken. How could she destroy our child’s joy, and on Christmas? I later tidied the moment up, laughing it off with a mom’s just being silly. She’s a mad scientist, best suited for the lab (diabolical laugh).

His chemist-mother was a loving parent who just never acquired graceful social skills.

I walked across my brother’s perfectly coiffed Bermuda grass to my young friend. “What’s your name?”

“Max.”

“You say Santa does not exist?”

“The entire thing was rigged.”

Rigged.

He went on. “So, my dad— ”

Another parent ruining a child’s Santa Claus.

“Is he a scientist?”

“Huh?”

“Carry on.”

“So, the 3D printer I got for Christmas? It’s heavy. I heard my mom tell my dad to be careful coming down the stairs with it.”

“Oh well, so they were helping Santa.” I tried, but like my son, this kid was wicked smart.

“No, it all makes sense. All the noise every year and the yelling. Rigged. Even the cookies and milk.”

“Max, you can still believe in the concept of — ”

Kindness, truth, democracy. Santa.

“Thanks for the talk.” Max twisted his face up to me and rocketed off down the street. Onward, young friend, don’t become your parents.

Genealogy So We Know Who We Are

While I had prepared, the conversations at dinner veered more and more toward the offensive. I stood and sashayed into the next room.

The wine poured, and the succulent roast, green beans, and potatoes were long devoured. Then they began:

“Ha! Are you talking about Pocahontas-Warren? Those liberals, especially the dark ones, are all the same. Low IQ.”

Laughter.

“We are cleaning this nation up and getting these job-stealers off the streets and out of the US.”

“Did you see ICE kicking them to the curb?”

As I sat on the couch listening, I thought of my college friend’s Colombian wife, a legal US citizen for some thirty years. 

They live in North Carolina, and she is a fourth-grade teacher. As she stood in the classroom teaching her students, ICE barged in, ziptied her wrists behind her back, and planted her face into the floor as her young students stood aghast.

They held her in a room without counsel for nearly a day.

They assaulted her because she speaks Spanish and because her skin is brown. She now has PTSD and barely sleeps.

Yet, now skin color does not matter. Recently, a young mother in Minneapolis was murdered by ICE. She was white and an American citizen.

They shot her in the face for trying to support her neighbors, who were being terrorized by them.

The dinner conversation continued. Then, the topic of genes arose via Ancestry, something they seemed fixated on (I wonder why).

“I did the kit. I think everyone should do it, you know, so you know who you are. Me? Mostly Scottish Irish. But one thing for certain is I have nothing black in me.”

Laughter.

“It said I have 30 percent that’s Jewish. I’m not ashamed, doesn’t bother me a bit.”

“So, halfway into the furnace.”

Laughter.

“It’s all a melting pot. It’s all just stirred in whether we like it or not.”

I kept my composure. I chose stoicism.

I’d heard enough, and I was ashamed that some at that table were my blood, and that everyone at that table laughed.

I stood and paced and eventually disappeared outside. A crescent moon blinked above the pine tree line.

I messaged my son, now in his twenties. “Do you recall Mom telling you there was no Santa Claus? I think you were seven.”

“Why are you being weird? Vaguely, so what? It was still the holidays the next year and the one after and now. And the season is supposed to be about Christ, even though we aren’t officially Christian.”

He had a point. As a child, he never held that grudge, but he debated it with his mother every year after. It was somehow what I needed to hear now.

I thought of Max. I hoped I’d see him again. I’d tell him, we don’t choose our family, but we must try to accept the unchangeable and sustain our values.

Instead of disappearing down the street, I believed Max would engage me.