Opa Claus

Red is the color of passion. It is the color of blushes. It is the favorite color of the man in every dream of American children during the month of December. He is wise and all-knowing, and healthy despite his overweight reassurances. He is a saint and a man of the world. He is an oxymoronic little white lie we tell our children.

St. Nicholas Day was the day Frank's brothers told Frank the truth behind Santa Claus. They told Frank there was no way possible that Santa could go around the world in one night. St. Nick was a real person—a bishop in the Catholic Church who died long ago. Frank's brothers, Reese and Derik, told Frank that Santa Claus was a conspiracy of my imagination. Frank was only six, and his older brothers were nine and twelve.

"Mom lied to you!" said Derik.

"Ask her, she'll tell you. She won't lie to you if you ask her," said Reese.

"There was no such thing as Santa," said Derik.

Could it be, thought Frank, could it be that I was lying? What other things did I lie about? Frank questioned if he could trust me or the rest of the world. How could his school, TV, radio, books, and his Opa tell such a world-renowned lie?

"Mom, Derik and Reese are telling me there is no Santa," said Frank.

I thought for a long while, pretending that I didn't hear him.

"Have you picked up your room yet?" I said. "Boys, go clean your rooms."

"Mom!" Frank said.

I took a big sigh and picked his little body up to me. He was getting heavy.

The truth is I didn't know what to say. He was younger than the others when they stopped believing the Santa Claus stories. Suddenly, I felt as though I were deceiving my youngest child. Santa was, after all, a part of our culture.

"Okay... maybe it is time you understood the story of Santa," I said to Frank. Before I could explain further, the wailing began.

"I told you that's what she'd say," Reese told Frank.

"But I haven't even told him anything," I said.

"You said 'the story of Santa,'" said Reese.

Reese stressed the words with quotation marks using his index and middle fingers. I spun to see Derik and Reese in the doorway of Frank's bedroom. Frank ran from the room and wailed even louder, tossing himself from chair to chair, room to room until finally I could not stand it anymore.

I thought about my European upbringing in America. During my childhood, each December 24th, my father—their Opa—would take on both the role of German Santa Claus, St. Nikolaus, as well as the old witch, the alte Hexe, who would take the children away and eat them or do other demonic things to them for their bad behavior. Oma would coax me and my brothers and sister when we were children to the back of the house with cookies and crayons while Opa readied the Christmas tree with gifts, and every once in a while he would throw something against the wall, shouting in broken English.

"Chhhhildren, stay vere you are, the alte Hexe, she vants dat she takes you avay. But I vill stop herrr," Opa said.

Opa huffed with exhaustion from the struggle. There was a pound against the wall indicating a continued fight, more thrashing, and then quiet. Finally, when all was ready, he would come into the room in exhaustion, feigning panting with his shirt sleeve shredded.

"The alte Hexe, I chased her avay, and the St. Nikolas, he is putting down the toys, hurry... perhaps you can catch him," Opa would say.

I remembered how my siblings and I would run as quickly as we could to the front of the house to catch St. Nikolaus. Every year the story became more alive.

"Aiiii, you missed him, again," Opa would say. "No, look, der he is up high, do you see him?"

Opa looked out the window and pointed up.

There were new toys still in their packages, wrapped in bright red, green, or silver paper, each with a tag proclaiming its owner under the twinkling Christmas silver tree strewn with tinsel and red electric lights. There were custom-made clothes (my father was a tailor) in various piles throughout the room. Each table was laid out with delicious varieties of food. Of course, Santa was never in sight, but Christmas had come at that moment. It was magic.

Frank's shrieking cries continued. Frank threw himself on a chair in the living room in agony. He might as well have been told there was no God. But to a child, Santa was God. I could take no more. With a swift glance of "you'd better be quiet or else" to the two older boys, I reached over to Frank to soothe him.

"I didn't lie. Your Opa, he is Santa Claus," I said.

Suddenly, the crying stopped. Frank thought about this and wiped his tears. The little wheels turned in his head quicker than I could contrive.

"Oh yeah, that's why my Opa drives a red van. It turns into a sleigh on Christmas Eve. And I was thinking something else—that's why he has a closet full of costumes, so no one will recognize him the rest of the year," said Frank.

Opa had told me never to reveal the secrets of the walk-in closet. How could I tell my son that the costumes he saw were really specially designed for festivals? The costumes were all that remained now that Opa had retired.

Frank continued. "And that's why Opa came to my preschool when I was little. I thought he was just really good at pretending to be Santa, but he really is Santa."

Frank wasn't finished. His creative mind continued to feed his rationalizations until he could come up with no more reasons.

"And that's why he doesn't let us come with him to walk the dog, because he's really going to feed his reindeer," Frank said.

He even almost had his brother Reese convinced that he was really an elf.

"You always help Opa in handing gifts and candy to children at the German Club, and you even have little points on your ear tips, just like an elf," Frank said to Reese.

"You have them too!" said Reese.

"So does Derik," said Frank. "We must all be part elf, like Opa. Maybe someday I will take over Opa's job like in that movie about the Santa Clause."

The next Sunday, when the boys went to visit Opa, he could not believe the story had gone so far.

"Leona, vy did you tell dem dis storrry?"

Opa rolled his r's hard and shook his head at me in disappointment. I waited until the children were in the kitchen busy sampling Oma's freshly baked Christmas cookies.

"Because, Opa Claus, you told it to me," I said.