Looking Back

Last night my daughter and I watched "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer". The 1964 claymation classic that for me has always dropped the green flag for the Christmas season. This year network television chose to air it on November 30, which seems way too early, but that is another topic. I don't remember the first time it aired because I was two years old, and even if I could have understood it then, we probably didn't have a television anyway. I don't think I knew it was in color until sometime in the 70s. But it is a classic. Let the games begin!

Watching it with an almost 14 year old is somewhat of a challenge. A teenager. The time when you adjust to the idea of Santa. The time to go from anticipation to reflection. Logic. A 300lb man and a chimmney don't add up. When the whole family participates in the wink that follows the leaving of cookies and milk for the delivery man. Playing the game that keeps the spirit alive.

I remember a certain Christmas when I was about 6-8 years old. My daddy told us in great detail Christmas morning how he had gotten up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve because he had heard a strange noise. "Something scratching on the roof" he said, and he had to check it out. When he came down the hallway he noticed a large man in the living room dressed in red. He said it scared him for a few minutes before the man turned to look at him and he realized it was Santa! "What did he say? What did he look like? Did you see the reindeer? Why didn't you wake me up? Why, why, why" A million questions from all three boys. Daddy had actually seen Santa. Wait till I tell my friends.

Well my friends didn't really seem that excited, and they had similiar "Santa encounter"stories of their own. But I thought of this for years. I carried it with me until I came to that gray peroid of decision. The time when common sense and want collided. Why had they tricked me? Why not just give me some presents and take full credit? What about the toothfairy? The easter bunny? This was getting tough. While my friends told me that they knew all along there was no Santa, my parents still said there was. Better go with the home version...just to be on the safe side.

That was a long time ago. Many Christmas' past. And yes, it is tough at times to watch a Christmas classic with a 14 year old, but as we sat there and watched them I still remembered when she was finally old enough for me to tell her about her grandfather's Santa encounter. The scratching on the roof and the man in the red suit slipping quietly through our living room some forty years ago. How he had eaten the cookies and tasted the milk and how the carrots we left for the reindeer had the strangest teeth marks and how the were mysterious drag marks on the roof and in the yard and how the dog never barked and how......and the look on her face tells me all I need to know. It tells me why my parents told me the stories and why she will tell her children them too. Why they will believe for years....just to be on the safe side.