The line ahead of me seemed to stretch on forever, infinite bodies winding through a labyrinth of velvet ropes. Noisy children wiped the snot from their noses. Tired parents struggled with bags and boxes under the shadow of a great fake pine tree that reached all the way up to the third floor of the atrium. The smell of cinnamon wafted over the crowd from a nearby hot cider cart, and the music in our ears told of white snow and jingle bells. Yes, it was that time again, that special time that came through but once a year, and if you ask me it isn’t nearly enough.
Frankly, there should be a half Christmas in July, and I’m not at all opposed to a practice Christmas sometime in October. Who needs that godless Halloween nonsense anyway? Why spend your hard-earned dollars on candy and costumes when you could purchase various electronics of dubious quality and purpose?
I hate all other holidays except Christmas. I hate anyone who does not love Christmas as much as I do. I hate anyone who does not celebrate Christmas. But I don’t consider myself anti-Semitic. Please don’t use that word around me. I don’t like to hear it.
But seriously I will punch you in the face with Christmas. Don’t come at me and expect anything less than Christmas. You will get your face fucked with my Christmas cheer. I will kill you and pull the Christmas out of your Christmas-hating ass. You even try to fuck with Christmas and Christmas will step on your dog and eat it. ‘Tis the Season, Motherfucker.
DANNY
Some guy in front of me was checking his phone and saying to his kid, “I don’t know how much longer we can wait for this thing, kiddo. Maybe we should come back tomorrow.”
“But Dad!” the kid whined. “We’ve waited for twenty minutes already! We can’t quit now!”
The man looked around, agitated. “Does anybody see a wait time?” he said aloud. No one answered; most were busy admonishing their own children.
The guy turned to me. He was on the stocky side, well tanned, with short spiky black hair sat over a round middle-aged face. His bowling ball stomach was concealed in a beige pullover. The zipper was undone. He said, “Hey, pal. Do you know how long this is supposed to take?”
I told him coldly, “Christmas will take as long as it takes, sir. Show a little respect.”
The man blinked, shocked stupid. I might as well have slapped him in his fat fucking face. “Excuse me?” he said.
“Christmas isn’t something to take lightly,” I said. “Maybe there is no tomorrow. Did you ever think of that?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the magic of Christmas,” I said, trying to unclench my jaw. “The boy wants to believe and you are crushing those beliefs. And I will not have it.”
The man, let’s call him Danny, just stood there a while, stunned, clearly in awe of my power. I looked down at his boy and winked. And smiled. I knew that the boy shared my enthusiasm for the sacred day. I knew that one day the boy would be my boy.
For I had to save him. I had to save him from his father…
“Wait a minute,” Danny said, checking around me. “Where the hell is your kid?”
“What kid?” I said.
“You don’t have a kid with you?”
“Why would I need one?”
“You’re standing in a line to meet Santa Claus.”
“So are you,” I said.
“Yeah, ‘cause I’m with my kid, you brain-dead asshole.”
“I don’t see what difference that makes,” I said. “There’s no age limit on Santa.”
“You’re like forty!”
I repeated, “There is no age limit on Santa. Ask anybody. Ask the Internet.”
“I don’t know what that means. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
DANNY 2
Now the folks behind me felt the need to get involved. They usually did. “Wait, this guy doesn’t have a kid?” I turned to meet the face of my newest enemy. It was another Dad; let’s call him Danny 2. He was also overweight, but considerably more so, a pencil-thin goatee set between his bulbous cheeks. Beside him was his wife, a dark-haired and plastic-faced woman who wore too much lipstick, and their two fat children. “What is it?” Danny 2 said, smiling. “You just had to meet Santa Claus?”
“That’s right,” I said. “It’s my destiny.”
His wife said, her eyes narrow slits of derision, “It’s your destiny to meet a mall Santa?”
Earlier that day I had murdered a Starbucks barista for wishing me ‘Happy Holidays.’ She couldn’t have been a day over her sixteen. I told her that it was the Christmas season and that her life was PC bullshit. Then I painted my face with her blood and left the premises with my chai latte and raspberry scone.
But did this idiot mom/wife appreciate the brutal reaches of my faith?
“It’s not just a mall Santa,” I snapped. “And yes I know this isn’t the original Santa. I’m not stupid. There are many malls, with many Santas. These are merely his vessels, and each of them contains a splinter of the original essence.”
“…What?”
“He’s inside of them!” I shouted. “They are direct conduits to the source! You people don’t even know what you’re doing here, do you? You don’t even know what this is!”
By now I had the attention of pretty much every parent and crying child within earshot, and I was glad of it.
I announced, “Today I am just a child, as we are all children in the presence of the great and terrible Santa Claus. But some of you have forgotten. You have lost your way. I will now return you to the path, with violence if need be.”
FULL SANDLER
Some of the elves began circling. I wondered if they too had been lost, blinded by their own adulthoods to the magic within. “I pity you,” I told them, adopting a defensive posture. I said to the others, “Perhaps I will have to take all of your children away from you, not just Danny’s. Perhaps I will have to take them into a new and better world, the world of Christmas-all-the-time. Together we will sow the seeds of a holy war that will wipe away any trace or remembrance of another holiday. All will be made to celebrate Christmas and become pure in the light of our wrath.”
Now one of the elves made a grab for me. He was of course a little person, and I can already feel your eyes beginning to roll. You’re worried this whole scene is about to devolve into some sort of lowbrow Sandler-esque ‘comedy’ situation featuring an immature slugfest between me and a midget, like it’s the goddamn early 2000’s or something, a bunch of stupid high flying professional wrestling type cartoon bullshit.
But trust me: When I do it, it’s cool.
Because I don’t fuck around. I kicked that elf in the face so hard I was sure I killed him. When the others saw how far I was willing to go, one of them cried, “Danny! Oh, my God! He killed Danny!”
“Wait, his name was Danny too?” I said. What a coincidence, I thought. It is a small world after all.
“Of course his name was Danny!” the little girl elf said. I guessed she was about fifty, and possibly married to the man I’d just killed. Either that or they were dating. I’m not sure which but I intend to get more details after the trial.
I HATE YOU, DANNIES
“Fuck, man,” Danny 2 said. “What the fuck did you do?”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “You done fucked up.”
“Jesus,” I said. “There are children present. How would you like it if I started to swear?”
Now the round of slappings began. First Danny caught me across the left cheek. I will remember the sting of it for the rest of my accursed days. My head was spun clean around to Danny 2, who smacked me immediately again. This spun me around once more, creating a kind of turnstile effect, wherein my face was the turnstile, and the hands of the Danny’s were the peasants shuffling through. This went on for a solid thirty-five seconds, when others saw their chance to join in without disrupting the rhythm, and did so.
Soon it was just a carousel of slapping, my beat red face swollen and spinning around and around and around, smack, smack, smack…
No one called security. By now the crowd was enjoying my company. The slapping went on for fifteen more minutes. By the end of it I didn’t know who I was, or if I had ever existed at all.
But it was worth it, because all of that slapping had at last earned the attention of the only one of us that truly mattered…
MY BIG WHITE POPPA
His rich bellowing voice parted the crowd like a great ship through still waters. “Wait!” the man said. “Before you kill him, bring him before me. I would meet this man so dedicated to our special day.” Either I was delirious, or they had hired one hell of a mall Santa.
“Truly you hold one of the shards,” I mumbled through cracked and bleeding gums. Even with my right eye nearly swollen shut the man’s radiance was blinding. I stumbled forward in the arms of the Danny’s, beaten, bruised, like that Christ guy.
I came before Santa Claus. He asked me my name. I gave it. He told me I was one of the blessed. A tear rolled down my cheek. “Thank you, my Lord.”
Then he told me to dance.
“Dance, my Lord? Right here? Now?”
“Dance!” he repeated. So of course I hoisted my cracked and broken body to its feet and did as my Lord commanded me. And Santa did clap along to the beat of my hooves, and the elves sang their song, and the people did watch and make merry. In some way I felt that my entire life had been leading to this moment, and injured though I was, I intended to make the most of it. I would not fail him. I could not fail him. Not here. Not now.
Not in front of the children. Their parents may have failed them, but I would not. I would teach them the true meaning of Christmas. I would give their otherwise useless lives meaning.
THE WORLD IS A LIE
So the music from some unseen speaker continued its ghostly play, and the elves did laugh and sing.
But something didn’t feel right. It wasn’t just that I’d shit my pants some time ago; I had a diaper for that. No, this was something else. Something deeper.
“Dance,” Santa shouted, clapping louder and louder. “Dance before me, you fucker!”
Suddenly the energy of the space had turned. I could feel it on my skin. I could see it in Santa’s eyes. There wasn’t a trace of sincerity in them. He was only enjoying my dance ironically…
The crowd recorded me without my consent and posted my drunken flailings to their hateful TikToks, where detached onlookers would not be able to properly feel the Christmas magic I was going for. I knew then they would judge me as a lunatic. They would never understand.
And I realized that none of them understood, not a single person there. All of them were guilty, the elves and this false Santa alike.
I stopped my dancing. “What’s the matter, my child?” the mall Santa cried. “I can still hear the music!”
“You are not the true Santa,” I said in a defiant tone. “You are not even his vessel. You do not hold a fraction of his power. You live only to pervert the message of Christmas.”
Then he sprayed me with a hose. He had it ready there right beside him, like it was part of the plan all along. That told me everything I needed to know. This whole game had been rigged from the start. “Figures,” I muttered, smoking a cigarette.
They erected a great cross in front of the Christmas tree. I had of course considered crucifixion a distinct possibility for my eventual death. One did not attempt to spread the holy word of sweet Christmas hams and eggnog without a certain sense of impending doom, one that naturally gave birth to an increasing paranoia of all living things. I also used to think I might be impaled like a vampire for some reason, wooden stake and everything, but crucifixion was like number three on my list of top ten most probable deaths. Number two was sharks.
DEATH AND RESURRECTION
The rest of this tale is sadly predictable. They nailed me up and I died. But then I came back to life like five minutes later, for a little while, which I think counts as some kind of miracle. I said to that secular crowd of heathen filth, “I have seen the other side. And it sucks. It fucking sucks. But I’m going to bring Christmas there. Yes. I will conquer hell with Christmas.” And to the children of my enemies, who were truly the only hope of our future, “How about it, kids? Who wants to come with me?”
Silence, at first…
And then the throngs began to shift, and crack apart, and from inside the many confused forms the children began to sift through. Diamonds in the rough they were, at long last free of their dirt. And their parents became as chaff behind them, became as nothing, as was prophesied.
I looked up into heaven, which was white, white as the driven snow.
And I saw the true Santa Claus; his white-gloved hand urged me forward.
I sat upon his lap, and rested my head against his shoulder. “I’d like a Nintendo Switch,” I said.
He whispered into my ear, “Shhh…” His white flowing beard tickled my skin, and I knew that everything was going to be okay. I closed my eyes. He said nothing else and neither did I. There was no need to speak.
It was kind of like the end of that movie Eraserhead.
Merry Christmas.
Not sure what I just read but I, too, believe. Merry fucking Christmas you wonderful old hack writer! Merry damn Christmas computer. Merry Christmas Potter.