It was two days before Christmas vacation and the kids’ brains had already stopped working. They’d tolerate nothing more taxing than a full period worth of Christmas hangman or group word-jumbles.

“Do we really want to be hanging an innocent man at Christmas-time,” I asked, shaking my head at them in disgust, “just to provide you with a little amusement? Think about his family. Could you live with yourselves, condemning him to the ultimate punishment simply because you couldn’t figure out the word was mistletoe?”

They groaned, predictably.

“Can we tell stories about what we remember about Christmas from when we were little?” Courtney asked.

This was actually a pretty good idea. “I want you to spend the first twenty minutes of class writing down your memories in a five paragraph essay,” I told them. “Then we can share our stories for the rest of class. Make sure to put your names on your essays, which you will pass in at the end of class.” Which you will never see again and I will never end up grading or even reading. Which I did not tell them.

“Will you tell us stuff about when you were a kid too?” Pat asked.

“Sure,” I agreed. At least there was no way I could leave these reminiscences in the junker. I sat at my desk thinking while they wrote.

I remembered playing with Matchboxes in the living room one Christmas Eve, staging Evel Knievel-style jumps off a piece of cardboard and merrily humming “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Meg was laughing uproariously as she watched me from the couch and Kate was trying to shush her up. Assuming it was the particular jump I’d just set up that was so laughable, I added, with no little fanfare, a police car and the A-Team van to the end of the line-up and glanced up at Meg in so, there style. She started to laugh even harder.

I had a lot of problems with Christmas, mostly with the songs. If you’ll indulge me:

1) The intro to “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” asks do you recall the most famous reindeer of all? What kind of question is this? He’s already made it clear that he knows that you know at least eight B-list reindeer. That’s like saying, “Hey, I know you’re a big Fillmore and Polk fan, but ever hear of this guy Washington?”

2) The entire premise of the above song annoyed me, and still does, especially the then all the reindeer loved him part. No one gives a hoot about Rudolph until Santa gives him the nod, then all of a sudden, they’re his best friends. Of all the obsequious pandering—reindeer toadies and hangers-on don’t deserve to be friends with Rudolph.

3) How Santa knows that we’re all God’s children and that, supposedly, makes everything right. This got me to wondering about all the non-Christian, God-believing kids in the world. If bypassing one little kid’s house on the way to dropping craploads of presents off for another kid is making everything right, then okay, Santa, that is, indeed, what you do.

4) You would think a spazzy drumming kid would give the baby Jesus a crying fit, but instead he smiles. This song never actually bothered me, though—just made me cry a little.

5) In “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” I found the line Through the years we all will be together, if the Fates allow sort of a cop-out. The Fates? But I understood that they didn’t say God because then people would start getting mad at God in the middle of the song for taking away their dead relatives and that would put them completely out of the Christmas spirit.

6) Pretending that the snowman is Parson Brown. The guy says to the “parson” (in the presence of his girlfriend) that he’s not married but that the “parson” can do the job when he’s in town. Then they go back and have cocoa and face unafraid the plans that (they) made. Excuse me? What plans, I would ask if I were the girlfriend. If that was a proposal, it was the lamest proposal I’ve ever heard. Asking a snowman if he will marry you and your girlfriend is not a proposal. I might have misunderstood this song, though.

7) Sally, or someone, wanted a picture book—yellow, blue and red. Why on earth would you request what specific colors you wanted in your picture book? Requesting a particular title is one thing, but this made no sense. Also, if you were going to request particular colors, why stick with the primaries? Why not go all out and request a picture book—maroon, aquamarine and burnt sienna?

8) On the Ray Coniff Singers’ version of “Deck the Halls,” there is a crazy man amongst the party who keeps popping up, saying creepy things like, Girrrls, I’m under the mistletooooe! Then, inexplicably, they all laugh uproariously at his lechery. It sounds way creepier in person, trust me. I think he might be the same “eccentric” guy who buys his girlfriend weird things like French hens.

I had a nightmare about him one year where he picked me up and tried to throw me into the lit fireplace. For what must’ve been at least ten minutes, I kept moving my arms and legs around the bricks like a cat trying to keep out of the vet carrier, sweating profusely and getting my feet caught on the festive stockings here and there. Then I finally woke up. I always skipped by that song when I was by myself.

On the day after Christmas I was playing on the living room floor again when Meg came over to me. “That Lite-Brite’s from Mum and Dad you know,” she said.

“This is from Santa,” I corrected her.

“Sylvie, how many Christmas specials do you need to see to believe there’s no Santa Claus?” Meg was in first grade, but terribly precocious.

I was quiet for a little while. “Mum and Dad say Santa’s real,” I finally said quietly.

“Why do you think Paul and Jennie always talk about opening their Christmas presents? Why doesn’t Santa wrap our presents?”

“He likes to switch things up—keep the fun alive,” I should’ve responded and bought myself another year of blissful ignorance, but it was too late. For years, these little inconsistencies had meant nothing to me. Now, things were crumbling around me.

Oscar Wilde wrote that we can always believe the impossible, but never the improbable. This explains why everyone gets mad when the Incredible Hulk’s pants don’t split at the seams and go flying off, but instead turn into perfectly serviceable jean cut-offs. They don’t actually get mad at the fact that he’s turning into an insane green monster-man though, just at the cut-offs.

This also explains why it was a simple matter of wrapped versus unwrapped presents that brought the whole Santa myth down for me. Once Meg brought me face to face with the possibility, there was no denying it. I asked Kate, just to be sure, but by that point, I knew.

Meg approached me again later that night. “In case you were wondering, there’s no Easter Bunny or tooth fairy either.” I started to cry. This related possibility, indeed, had not yet occurred to me.

For some reason, all of my Christmas memories seemed either boring or ridiculous. I ended up telling the kids how happy I was to get the Lite-Brite.