This story was written for our English club's comedy reading; making it Christmas-themed was my own preference since 'tis the season and all.
Generally, I don't go into detail about my writing process unless someone specifically asks me a question, because I can't imagine that many people are terribly interested, and also because I generally write analyses of different types of literature, so, frankly, I don't even care that much about my writing process. But this does take a smidgen of explanation, lest you think I'm more creative than I actually am. The concept behind spotlighting for Santa is not mine. Yeah, this is my "I do not own Spotlighting for Santa" disclaimer. A good friend of mine participates in this activity with her family; although, to the best of my knowledge, none of the Santas have ever been maimed or injured. Everything else, though, is purely fiction. This is a bit longer than the previous story, which is more of a monologue. I think it comes out to about three pages, so it's not a novel or anything, but I don't want people thinking they signed up to read a pamphlet and feel like they got Les Miserables. Again, happy reading.
Spotlighting for Santa
Because my parents were visiting relatives out-of-state, I spent the first few weeks of Christmas vacation with my roommate Lauren and her family. Lauren extended the invitation to me somewhat delicately. “We’re going to be having some pre-Christmas celebrations,” she said carefully. “I know your family doesn’t…traditionally…celebrate the holidays…”
I did not want to spend two weeks alone at my house, so I told her it was no big deal, and I was looking forward to the new experience. I’d just have to make sure I was careful about telling my mom I’d be staying in a house where they perpetuated the Santa myth.
My mother is very, very religious, and thinks that those who teach their children about Santa Claus are actually worshipping an idol that the devil has placed in a red suit with white trimming and gifted with a deep, somewhat disturbing laugh.
“The good Lord hates this time of year,” my mother somberly told me once after we watched a holiday commercial.
“Well, it’s normal for people to dislike their birthdays as they get older,” I said, but fell promptly silent at the look on my mother’s face.
“I believe,” mom said, attempting to disregard my interruption “that God wants me to remove traces of Christmas commercialism from the world.”
I paused, trying to think of a way to make this conversation less insane. There was none. “God wants you to exterminate Santa?”
My mother rolled her eyes. “Well, there’s no reason to make me sound like a holiday version of Charles Manson; God wants me to eradicate the pretentious aspects of the holiday…But essentially, yes.” And from that point on, Christmas became a dicey time of year.
Mom’s passion regarding her belief has moved her to extremes. I still remember riding home from the grocery store with my parents when my mom yelled at my dad to pull over.
“Steve, stop the car,” Mom said urgently, digging in the glove department, and placing a pocketknife in her coat pocket.
Dad steered to the side of the road. “What is it?” he asked, but my mom was already out of the car, sprinting to the yard that boasted the offending symbol of Christmas cheer: one of those huge inflatable Santas. She was running all hunched over, like she was trying to avoid spotlights from police helicopters, and when she got to the strings that were holding the inflatable Santa to the ground, she glanced back and forth quickly before she started sawing away.
“My God…” Dad muttered, sinking down into his seat.
Seeing that mortification had rendered my father useless, I put my window partially down. “Mom,” I hissed. “What are you doing? Someone’s gonna see you!”
But by then, my mother had cut through a cord, pulled Santa down, and stabbed him viscously until he was a deflated plastic pile of dashed dreams and manic vandalism. She ran back to the car, cackling. “Drive! Drive!” she yelled at my Dad while she slammed the car-door shut. And it was then, peeling out of the Jones’s driveway with my mother laughing and putting her knife away, that I realized I would always have a very complicated relationship with Christmas.
So, with experiences like that influencing my image of Christmas, imagine my conflicting emotions when Lauren’s dad informed me we were going to “spotlight for Santa.”
I smiled a polite, excited smile for him, and then waited until it was just Lauren and me in the living room. “What is spotlighting for Santa?” I asked the question with no little amount of fear and accusation in my voice. I had a picture in my mind of a fat, bearded man staring blankly into a bright light before meeting an untimely demise at the hands of a group of hillbillies. Or my mother.
“We just have one of the adults put on a Santa costume, and have him go out into the woods,” Lauren explained. “Then we take the little kids out on four-wheelers, and we pretend to have sighted Santa.”
The idea actually sounded pretty cute, and so I put aside my jaded associations with Santa, and hopped behind Lauren on her four-wheeler, pulling a wagon in which sat three of her little cousins. The plan was to rendezvous at a certain spot and shine the spotlight towards a specific tree, thus finding Santa. For a girl who consistently loses her car in the Walmart parking lot, driving around in the woods at night seemed a little risky, but Lauren assured me she knew where she was going. After about 15 minutes of circling the same area, I remembered that Lauren is the person most often with me when I am looking for my car in the Walmart parking lot.
“We’re lost, aren’t we?” I asked Lauren, balefully.
“Well, I think if we just head back to the house, and start over, we can end up where we need to be,” Lauren attempted to reassure me, but then she admitted, “I’m not really positive which way to go. We’ve been circling so much…”
“Really, Lauren? Really? You were all, ‘I’ve grown up in these woods.’ You made it sound like you were Squanto showing the pilgrims their way around Plymouth Rock.” I was, admittedly, overreacting. But I was from the city, and to someone who only ever saw, like, a dozen trees at a time, getting lost in the woods was basically like walking the plank.
“I know, and I’m sorry. I may have exaggerated my knowledge of the woods a bit. Do you have any idea how to get back?” Lauren was being meek and apologetic, and since I still wanted to be angry, I found her humility annoying.
I sighed deeply. “Just turn right and keep driving.”
In reality, I had no idea how to get back to her house. But at that moment, it felt very important for me to maintain the upperhand intellectually.
As we were driving, I heard Porter, one of Lauren’s cousins in the wagon, gasp and shout, “Is that a person?”
Lauren stopped and I shined the spotlight around, until I saw a man in a red suit huddled on the ground, clutching his leg.
“Santa?” Porter said, and the two other kids, Amanda and Jake, peered over the sides of the wagon as well.
I jumped off the four-wheeler, and Lauren followed me, telling her cousins to stay in the wagon. I had a second of fear where I considered the possibility that this was not, in fact, Lauren’s uncle in a Santa costume, but instead a serial killer with an elaborate and fetish-y game-plan. “You go first,” I nudged Lauren forward. She paused and looked at me questioningly. “He’s your uncle,” I insisted.
“Uncle Mike? Are you OK?” Laruen asked, also not getting too close.
Mike groaned. “I tripped over a root, and I think I broke my ankle.”
I looked closely at our surroundings to make sure my mother was not hiding behind a tree with a club and a scary smile. For a moment, I also wondered why Santas always ended up in painful heaps around me. I had somehow, it seemed, become my mother’s unwilling apprentice. I was actually a much more apt Santa-slayer than my mother, who had to plot and take risks. All I had to do was be, and, bam, down went Santa.
Lauren and I heaved Mike up so we were both supporting most of his weight, then we helped him hop over to the wagon. The children were thrilled to have found Santa, until they realized he was hurt.
“Will he be able to work on Christmas Eve?” Jake asked tearfully.
I was not familiar with all of Santa’s powers. I mean, yeah, he could squeeze down chimneys and order elves around, but could he heal himself? If healing broken bones was part of his allure, I was starting to see a little of my mother’s point about the confusion between Santa and God. Lauren was busy trying to make sure Mike was comfortable, so I was left to field the question.
“Well, I’m sure with a few weeks of rest and some serious physical therapy, he’ll be able to get around on his own just fine,” I said, patting Jake’s head.
“But Christmas is two weeks away!” Amanda whimpered.
Lauren glared at me as the kids started to cry.
A tear-filled ride, a hospital trip, and some cookies and comfort later, the children were reassured that Santa would live to ride again, and I was calling my mother to let her know how I was doing, and explain the concept behind spotlighting for Santa. It struck me, somewhat belatedly, that my mother may not be the best person with whom to share this experience.
“Spotlighting for Santa?” she said, with way too much interest in her voice.
And so it with trepidation and regret that I forward my apologies to any Santa unfortunate enough to run into a laughing woman on a four-wheeler. If you see a bright light, duck and cover. Merry Christmas.
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