December 25, 1995
St. Louis Airport, afternoon, stuck since 7 AM in a snowstorm.
Christmas is the most difficult day of the year. For me it is, other than my birthday. I’m sure it is for many other people too. From what you see everywhere, people are rushing around to get things for their families, their people then going back to happy homes, wherever they are, to be greeted by friends and family with presents, delicious food, games, music and love. At least it looks like that from the outside.
All that ended for me years ago, when I went to college. My parents were already distant and cold towards me when they were in the same room, let alone across an ocean and another country away. Their deaths didn’t improve things with the other relatives when I didn’t want to go to the funeral. I was sad and shocked but couldn’t do anything. I was in my first year of school in Paris and couldn’t afford to leave. But I know all this story. My story of woe is I. And me.
Boo hoo. Boo hoo. In the end, I’m never really sad on Christmas. Even though this Christmas, I’m sitting in an airport, waiting for a snowstorm to end so I can get a connection to go to Mexico. The energy around people feels better around the holidays. They are more giving and forgiving. It makes some people angry and very pissed off. But not me, after all, I know I’ll be talking to Santa again soon.
Once when I was in Florida for a job during Christmas, I was listening to a talk show on my car radio. A man named Bob Lassiter came on and started talking about his experiences with the holiday. It absolutely clicked for me. I almost lost track of the people I was tracking, until they went into a restaurant and had dinner. I had a donut, stale coffee from a gas station, and Bob Lassiter. He told me how Santa was always there, a good friend, someone who always kept their word and never let him down. It was like that for me too. I thought about all the times Santa came through and helped and made my Christmas better.
Santa Claus is real. He is real and has many helpers all over the world, trying to make Christmas good for everyone. The positive energy of giving, love and hope that Santa represents is what we all need in our lives. Especially when we feel like we don’t have anything or anyone in our lives. All we have are memories of Christmas past, times forgotten, people and places long dead. Even in memory, the good and the positive that was helps us go forward. It is a model for what can be, what will be. If we only let it be.
I am just as real as Santa Claus and all the things he does. Sometimes I find myself questioning even that. Am I real and is what I do real? Do I make a difference in the world? Should I keep going on in it? I don’t even need to wait to answer, I need to keep going. I am more real than Santa since I am part of what makes Santa real. The Christmas Spirit, alive and kicking in these pragmatic, cynical modern days of data, numbers and quotas. Love is what Santa personifies and what he is. Why we need him. I still need Santa and feel that a Christmas without Santa is not really Christmas.
Sure, Santa’s suit is Coca-Cola red, that alone sets a bad example. Christmas is an economic exercise now, divorced from its religious meanings. People say now that we should be honest with our kids about Santa and explain where all those presents came from. I knew where they came from. I knew that Santa was busy and my parents helped him with my presents. Even when I was six years old and recognized my dad’s handwriting on all the gifts I got (two new Barbies, two My Little Ponys, and a Castle with knights, dragons, and wizards for them all to fight with. No Cabbage Patch Kid yet… I got her later when I was grown up…), I still believed. I needed to believe since it made more sense to me than my mom and dad going to Toys ‘r’ Us to spend money. No, Christmas and Santa were, and are, a kind of magic that made me happy and thankful for my life.
Christmas is still a magic that helps us all, if you want to believe in it. To make magic like this work, you have to believe and think that it is real and it can happen. Operant magic is just the same thing as operant conditioning, created by B.F. Skinner. If something good happens if we do something, we recreate the conditions and ways we did it before to make that good happen. That is why we recreate Christmas and Santa, even when we don’t have anyone to share it with.
Even in the airport here, the terminals are decked out in boughs of holly. There are Christmas trees, and decorations everywhere. We are all expecting the good result from making our worlds like our Christmases past.
Likely today, I will be here in the airport waiting for my flight. I’ll say ‘Merry Christmas’ to people and smile. We’re all stuck here in the airport, much like we are stuck in the world. I plan to make the best of it. I heard over the PA there will be dinners delivered soon for all the stranded travelers and that we will be put up in hotels near the airport. See? Christmas gifts.
Santa came though yet another time for me and made my Christmas better. I will get room service at the hotel and see if I can watch some movie or a Yule log burning on my TV. Thank you Santa and thank you for always being there, even when I wasn’t.
TATIANA TZARA
A poet, artist, and art criminal. Born in South Philly, USA, she is the grand-niece of the infamous Dadaist artist, Tristan Tzara. As soon as she could, she went to Paris to go to the Cabaret Voltaire and the Surrealist Collective, only to find it didn’t exist anymore. Instead, she studied English Literature at Gothenburg University in Sweden, between liberating art, manuscripts, and incunabula from people who didn’t appreciate them. After further training in Greece and Cyprus, Tatiana traveled throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in the Peace Corps as a Cultural Ambassador. Now, she lives somewhere in the Western United States, with plans to return to Europe. She has extensively studied many ancient and modern magical systems, both Eastern and Western. Tatiana’s articles, short stories, and poems have appeared in many places and you have probably already read something by her.
