Down with Santa

My understanding of Santa Claus radically changed when I was 8. I heard the truth about the fat man in red from my older brothers. They teamed-up to unload the bombshell during one of those dreaded fits of boredom that so often drive older brothers to acts of mean mischief. As the youngest in a family of Catholics, I was, by consequence, the last true believers in Santa Claus. This belief, this jolly yet delusional bubble, was burst by my brothers on a random night, months before Christmas, when I was beckoned from the love-seat to the couch to receive an important message.


“Hey. When we get presents for Christmas, you know how you think they come from Santa Claus?”

I paused and almost quibbled that not all of our presents came courtesy of Santa Claus, that grandma and grandpa and even mom and dad chipped in a little bit, but in the end I simply said, “Yeah.”

“Well, that's nothing but bull-crap! For Christmas, mom and dad are the ones who buy us presents. Then they just scribble 'From Santa' on the tags! It's a trick. A lie! And you fell for it. Santa's not even real.”

My aloof expression drew taut and troubled. This felt cataclysmic.

“No! It can't be true.”

They snickered and goaded me to ask mom if I didn't believe them, and when she somberly confirmed what my brothers had told me, their snickering gave way to howls of celebration. I didn't handle this grave revelation with poise. I wept and whimpered, and that typically has the effect of a Fourth of July fireworks show for older brothers.

My imagination was hit by a terrorist attack. I'd been duped. Taken for a fool. I connected the dots to other figures of dubious existence and in no time flying reindeer, the Tooth Fairy, and Johnny Appleseed fell like dominoes. My faith in God teetered; I put the man upstairs on notice. Adults lost a great deal of credibility the moment I learned the truth about Santa. By sixth grade, with the same grudging, Santa-is-for-suckers mindset of my brothers, I partook in the heckling of the only kid in class who still filled out a wish-list to that phony from the North Pole. I still can't stand Santa. This Christmas I'm sure to groan when I watch a weatherman put the nightly forecast on the back-burner so that he can speculate the whereabouts of a make-believe character.

“You bumbling jerk,” I'm likely to gripe at him. “Santa's fake and you know it.”

Ideas don't get much worse than the Santa-Tracker. On Christmas Eve, the transition from bad news—the downers about bombings in Israel and muggers posing as carolers—to a full-grown weatherman babbling about Santa is always a shaky one. It goes something like this:

“To recap tonight's top story, there were no survivors in the attack as war in the Middle East rages on with no end in sight...” The anchorwoman shuffles papers anxiously. “And now here's meteorologist Kenny Cumberland with an update on how local fog could be a real test for Rudolph's bright red nose. Kenny?”

Kenny forces a smile. “Hey! It's almost eleven and most kids are in bed by now, but I'm here to give you the scoop on Santa, anyway. See this graphic of a man in a sled led by flying deer? That's him, all right—making his way through Winnebago County!”

What ever money was put into Santa-Tracker technology would've been better served to fund anything else. Seriously, financing millions of dollars into wacky things like a Bigfoot Finder or a Loch Ness Monster Caller would still be more practical than the damn Santa-Tracker.

We learn about the nature of Santa (and the bogus doodads that track him) in a variety of ways. My sister, for instance, found out by means of a Family Feud home game. The category was “Fictional Characters.” The third-most popular answer was “Santa Claus.” The board-game was supposed to be safe for ages 5 and up. Shame on you, Parker Brothers.

A more common debunking of Santa occurs when kids walk in on their unsuspecting parents spreading presents around the tree. This can be a painful memory, and it becomes a doomsday scenario when they're also role-playing as horny Mr. Claus and drunk Mrs. Claus.

How ever you discovered Santa was a fraud, the basic origin of the mythology is the same: Kids believe in Santa because adults conjured up a story about him. And since that story pretty much ruined my outlook on life, I'd like to suggest three ways he can be phased out.

1.Parents who dig sci-fi movies are advised to offer their kids a blue or a red Flinstone vitamin. Tell them that the blue pill, unlike the Santa-colored one, will allow them to see life and reality as it really is. If they choose the blue pill, go Morpheus on them and reveal the truth about the Santa Matrix. If they choose the red pill, consider disowning them.

More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.

Pitches for Reality Shows

With the exception of the choicest episodes of Cops, I'm not a fan of reality TV. I see enough melodramatic sideshows while I'm away from my living room.


Reality show domination hurts the chances of a writer finding a substantial audience, too. Writers get to be as obsolete as rotary phone fixers when most Americans prefer watching the unscripted sloth of Honey Boo-Boo's mom and the spontaneous sleaze of Snookie to a half-hour's worth of reading. No one is required to write the mind-numbing words that come out of Honey Mom's mouth before she sneezes twice and forgets her train of thought. No one has to construct a scene in which Snookie squats on a fire-hydrant. Snookie knows damn well when to do that, without help from a snobby writer, thank you very much.

The number of people whose existences are being recorded and broadcasted is swelling. Storage Wars, Breaking Amish, Duck Dynasty, Doomsday Preppers, Small Town Security, South Beach Tow, Buying Alaska, and four-dozen shows about pawn shops have proved there is no premise too obscure and no freak too clueless to be exploited by reality TV producers.

Since I have no clue how these quirky commoners get discovered, I decided to create my own characters and premises. If imagination is going to lead to bankruptcy, hell, maybe I should at least prove I've got a keen eye for this new breed of talent—those who somehow entertain without any of the skills of a traditional entertainer.


Here are three pitches for reality shows.


1.) C.C.'s Sea World

From: C.C. Crandle

Dear National Geographic Channel,

My dolphin-smitten wife, diabetic lesbian daughter, and I run a cotton candy stand at Sea World. As you might have guessed, I'm a sexist Vietnam vet who also plays flute in a Jethro Tull cover band.

The women in my life are infuriating. First off, since dolphins are so common at Sea World, the animal trainers are becoming suspicious of my wife Hattie's ogling of the dolphins and obscene remarks about their blow-holes. They suspect the old-ball-and-chain is sure to mount a dolphin (or possibly several) any day now. To see my high school sweetheart mutate into a ticking time-bomb of dolphin lust is right up there with the biggest letdowns in my life.

I've got other letdowns, though. Take my daughter Debbie. (I used to add “please” to that request, but it only made people laugh, and when I insisted that I was being serious, they still turned me down...so I gave up on the “Take my daughter Debbie please” line.) Debbie can't keep her damn sweet teeth out of our cotton candy supply! But when I banish her from the stand for awhile 'cause she's costing us too much cash, she goes off and spends hundreds of dollars on sugary snacks with that damn credit card her mom gave her. Debbie is seriously hooked on the white zing. In addition to Graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows, the s'mores she cooks on the grill outside of our trailer include ingredients like Gummy Worms, Pez, Starbursts, Honey Buns, Ho-Hos, and additional marshmallows. She chugs glasses of maple syrup on special occasions. For God's sake...on her driver's license photo, she's biting the head off a chocolate bunny. I tell ya, she's more diabetic than dame!

Plus, she's dating an older woman built like a manatee who, as luck would have it, gets paid to feed manatees. You can't make this crap up, National Geographic.

As for me, maybe I'm not perfect. Sometimes I catch hell for refusing to serve cotton candy to Asians, whether Vietnamese or otherwise, but my argument is that their slanty eyes still give me the willies. The higher-ups have also warned me to stop startling everyone I see sitting on a park bench by screaming at them, “Sitting on a park bench!” But my downfalls are nothing compared to those of the poison-ladies I'm doomed to live with.

While I'm imprisoned in this concrete wasteland, all I'm asking for is the attention of your fine network to document my woes, as a cautionary tale of how not to live (with the exception of the Jethro Tull skull tattoo, which more people really should embrace).

Unhappily yours while sitting on a park bench at Sea World,

C.C. Crandle

More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.

Waiting out the Permafrost

Here's a poem from years ago. Be serious!


The sharp thwack of a cupboard door,
like a meat cleaver striking a cutting board.

Crystal-specked hamburger meat
waiting out the permafrost.

The creak of a medicine cabinet and
rattling pills pulled through a quick slit of light.

Elliott Smith breathing from the stereo
recycling the dazzling doldrums.

See the millions of pixels on TV
smeared like neon on wet concrete.

Like a lit cigarette, my last pencil
shrinks all the way down to the nub.