The Yuletide Factor. Tim Huff
Rockwell’s artistic license as heresy, I just plain like the added nuance, created by a few brush strokes, that says, “There’s only good going on here.”
This was the Santa I wanted my little girl, and later my little boy as well, to experience. Not just to imagine, but to experience.
And so, when my little girl was just three years old, I hatched a plan. One that ultimately, and very unexpectedly, grew into an ongoing and life-changing experience for me personally. It all started out quite simple, before rapidly turning into a wild and often unwieldy tradition.
All I initially wanted was for her to catch Santa Claus in action, during her very tender, imaginative and impressionable years. Not just an indoor staged mall Claus but the real deal, makin’ his rounds on Christmas Eve. So, I rented a Santa suit and began working a plan.
The whole bit of business was initially only meant to be a thirty- to sixty-second one-time gasp of an ordeal.
As an inner-city street outreach worker, I was often leaving home mid-evening to visit homeless youth and adults under bridges and in alleyways, so it was not uncommon for me to say early “goodnights” at home and depart until well past midnight. And early on, Sarah Jane was too wee to wonder why I would do that even on Christmas Eve. So, “to work” I went, or so she thought. But this time I simply drove my pickup truck around the corner, parked on a parallel street, snuck home on foot, entered through the side door, and crept down to the basement. In short order I was in costume and sneaking back out and into the backyard, all while my wife, Diane, kept Sarah Jane too occupied to notice.
All according to plan, Diane then beckoned Sarah Jane to peek into the backyard, cued by a snowball blast against the window, in a “What was that?” moment.
And there, in the snowy shadows of our maple tree, my little girl spotted the great Claus sneaking through the yard, stopping at the centre to look through his sack, just close enough to the window for her to get a good, shocking look. Sure enough, Santa would look up and see that he was caught in action and rush across the yard to hide behind the shed. And that was it, the whole shebang! An astonishing sighting at best, a fleeting did-that-really-happen experience in the least.
It’s always a jolt when things unexpectedly take on a life of their own, and this surely did! Friends and family heard about the caper, and the escapade grew. The following Christmas Eve I found myself visiting the backyards of a dozen friends’ and family’s homes where small children might be caught off guard with delight, having had my very own tailored Santa suit made and having purchased a theatre-worthy faux white beard and wig. Each visit was coordinated with precision, moving from west to east across the Greater Toronto Area on a rigid four-hour-plus timeline, so I could finale in my own backyard.
By the time my son was born, I was up to an exhausting commitment of sixteen annual backyard Christmas Eve visits. Now working a tricky six-hour cross-city schedule built around a plethora of Christmas Eve family traditions, dinners and church services, I found myself spending the night before Christmas travelling solo in the dark—hopping rickety fences, navigating dog droppings, and occasionally ending up in backyards of total strangers, much to their astonishment. The whole gag had likewise evolved into a much more complex production, inclusive of playful three-minute skits in the moonlight, followed by the theatre of writing (previously penned) notes for each child with a three-foot-long magic crayon, and treats left on each back stoop before the climatic “Ho-ho-ho” rush away.
Of course, word spread quickly among friends and colleagues that I had a bit of a covert Santa gig going, and it wasn’t long before I found myself volunteering near and far throughout the month of December, in hospitals and group homes and for families with children too fragile to leave home to meet a shopping mall or church basement Santa. By the time the routine had taken me all the way to the orphanages of Romania, I had processed in my own head—although others may not have yet understood it—the sacredness of the opportunity afforded me when purposed solely as a wildly unique opportunity to bless and be blessed.
The truth is that early and often the whole Santa gig necessarily included a number of awkward refusals as well. With all of it as much of a shock to me as anyone, by word of mouth alone I could have filled my Decembers with daily Claus engagements if I’d wanted to. I began getting calls from friends and associates, friends of friends and associates of associates, looking for Christmas party and special event Clauses. Ugh. I could not have been less interested, then or now. And every time someone asked my fee, I knew the inquiry was as far, far away as could be from the heartbeat of what I’d meant to do.
While this brief overview of the evolution of my own intrigue with Santa Claus and the strange personal tradition that grew out of it will help contextualize a number of the chapters in this book, there is one more twist that not only shapes this book but continues to shape me. One that, as it’s told, sets a tone I pray deemphasizes me and my silly antics, lifts up a number of truly sacred souls, and stirs yours.
It is this…
Often there are lulls between backyard Santa visits, as I await families returning from Christmas Eve church services or generational banquets, in whichever end of the city I am already in at any given time. Small intervals of time to circle slowly through communities as I await timely homecomings. About the fifth year into my Christmas Eve backyard Clausing, these lulls in the schedule secured the added tradition of time spent tenderly among those I came across who were surviving on the streets, as you will read more about before these chapters end. They too have allowed surreal opportunities to enter a myriad of other lonely worlds filled with bizarre and beautiful moments I could never have anticipated or otherwise imagined.
Very few people are driving casually through darkened communities on Christmas Eve. From highways to main streets to backstreets, traffic is light at best, and always purposeful, as most vehicles are travelling to or from festivities, working around church services and mass, family gatherings and bedtimes. And it’s almost startling to see the lights off in nearly every store and business in North America’s fourth largest city. But for major gas station franchises and the occasional doughnut shop, it is the only night of the year when the metropolis truly shuts down.
I especially love the slow dark drive through what were once identified as “working class” communities, allowing me to take notice of tiny shops and handmade signs I’d never take in otherwise. Imagining the people who either hustle from dawn to dusk to make their stores thrive or suffer through relentless small business woes and economic challenges. It was during a wander through such a community that I spotted a woman who stole my heart.
I approached a stoplight, taking note from a distance of a single dimly lit facility among the multiple darkened venues on both sides of the road. A coin-operated laundromat. I sat long and alone at the stoplight, with no other moving vehicles in sight, and peered in. There she was. A thin young woman, all alone behind a grimy plate glass window, folding laundry beneath a flickering fluorescent light. Nowhere else to be. No one to be with. Taking on a task that spells out anything but celebration. My heart melted as I watched her move in small, slow measures between the machines and a rickety folding table.
Among the greatest casualties of the new millennium rests the long lost certainty that any act of compassion will not come under scrutiny. Daily, unbridled lawsuits stem from serving coffee that’s too hot, congratulatory pats on the back that are too suspicious, and mere tones, if not words, that are too demonstrative. Paying special insurance premiums is now often recommended before serving church meals and driving senior citizens home, as second-guessing every “cup of cold water” moment becomes standard procedure. “Do unto others,” but don’t assume you are safe believing that “as you’d have them do unto you” will stand up in court. The risk of uninhibited compassion has become too great. An entire generation is having to put an unnatural courage at the centre of compassion, where previous generations were simply compelled by kind hearts, humane instincts and godly moments. It’s a quandary that can’t be ignored as predators and careless people act in the name of social justice and as occasional frauds play victim. But when a thoughtful person is forced to hesitate before a compassionate act, we must revisit the line in the sand that we have all but covered up. In a prayerful, heartfelt moment, the singular calling