I’ve forgiven Timmy Collins, my childhood nemesis and schoolyard bully, for many things, but making Christmas excitement uncool isn’t one of them. Imagine a Catholic school playground on a December day—white-shirted boys bustling around in navy slacks and ties and socks, girls skipping in plaid skirts—Tim’s voice remains clear: “You still get the Christmas Jollies?” No eleven year old should be able to manage such derision, but as Timmy’s height was ahead of his years, so was his condescension. I was only eleven or so myself, and I didn’t exactly know what the Christmas Jollies were, but somehow I sensed from the tone of Timmy’s voice that having them was akin to having cooties. Maybe worse.

I don’t remember my reaction, but there are only two possibilities: either I dug in my Taurean heel and protested that of course Santa existed; or, like an adolescent Peter denying his Lord, I protested that of course I didn’t still believe in the Claus.

I fear the latter is more likely. When I called my mother to ask, she remembered only that I and my siblings had believed in Santa longer than other children, and she was happy for that. She also recalled the moment she herself realized there was no Santa Claus: a long-hoped-for Cinderella watch absent from ‘neath the tree until her father called her into his bedroom and pulled it from his night table. Then, she knew her father was Santa.

***

Before my parents finally revealed to me the big secret of the Claus, I had no doubt about Santa; did any of us? Why would we, told as we were from an early age that nothing our little hearts desired was too great a request, no present too extravagant, no gift too outlandish? Actually receiving those gifts was quite beside the point; the important part wasn’t the wrapped package under the tree but the potential, the possibility and hope.

A childhood of Christmases is a memory of belief; the single one that most sticks out for me isn’t the smell of my mother’s baking Christmas cookies, nor the sight of my father fastidiously testing every last bulb in a fitzed-out strand of lights, but of Christmas Eve radio deejays’ reporting widespread sightings of a single red light in the sky—we children needed no more information to identify that particular flying object.

Beyond that, Christmas is a black-and-white-and-grey shag carpet in a sunken living room surrounded by my aunt and uncle and cousins. It’s an artificial tree sprayed with aerosol pine and strung with many-colored garland, amber lights, golden and crimson balls, and homemade ornaments collected over the years: my first star, a popsicle frame my sister made, a red-and-green paper chain miraculous for having survived so many springs and summers and autumns in our old Budweiser box of decorations. It’s John Denver and the Muppets’ “A Christmas Together,” Rowlff the Dog wishing us a merry little Christmas and Miss Piggy confusing figgy with piggy pudding (it’s not. It’s just pudding made with figs. And bacon), and every year a new True Value Christmas CD and vehicle bank, the latter of which is a little like the traditional Hess Truck except it comes with a hammer. That’s not true, but it should be.

It’s religious, too, of course: the nativity set our parish purchased with money my grandfather donated on his passing, as well as my family’s Jewish quasi-relatives; a couple we only ever saw every Christmas Eve until I was 28 years old (the first one I missed spending with my family because I was in Los Angeles, at USC). It’s the four-pm Christmas Eve mass my family attended every year, and it’s an improvised Bethlehem manger, a displaced couple in search of sanctuary, an infant who would go on to redeem the world by dying for it on a cross and the rotund man in a red suit who delivered to the world over presents commemorating that infant’s birthday. Well. At least that was the story we were told, anyway.

***

The change occurred gradually, and began not when I found out my parents were Santa but rather the year afterward, when I accidentally found two K-Mart bags full of toys in my father’s closet. My immediate reaction?

Guilt. I cried to my mother, scared that I’d ruined the surprise they were working so hard to build. My mother reassured me, however, that those gifts were meant for my cousins, that she was just holding them for my aunt.

Which made it okay to sneak looks in the bags when no one was around. Secret information’s always fun to have, and it was fun, right up until Christmas morning when the torn-asunder wrapping paper revealed our living room full of the same toys—the same Pogo balls, GameBoys, Transformers, and Legos—that were supposed to have been meant for my cousins.

The beginning of the end. My attitude toward Christmas began to change; knowing that Santa didn’t exist became another piece of secret information the cool kids knew, and I always wanted to be a cool kid. My cousins and I grew too cool for the Claus lap, and we smirked and teased each other about our previous Christmas Jollies like we were blowing smoke in each other’s faces.

The moment that ended my childhood of Christmases (if there is a better collective noun for Christmases—Christmi?—I don’t know it) came during one of those traditional Eve masses. I’d left my part-time job early to attend, which means it occurred while I was in high school during my junior or senior year; my freshman and sophomore winters were spent in Speedos on a swim team. I might’ve driven myself to the mass to meet my family there, which would mark it as my final Christmas before college, and I remember standing in the back of the church—Christmas Eve being one of two Catholic SRO holidays—among nearly a townsful of people, holiday decorations up, a tree on the altar. An organist led the congregation through religious carols like “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “O! Come, All Ye Faithful,” and “Joy to the World,” but I realized I wasn’t so interested in harking because I didn’t really feel either faithful or joyous.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t looking forward to an evening with my family, more that I missed the anticipation, the expectation, the pure and unadulterated glee for Christmas I’d felt as a child. I’d composed no lists of hoped for toys, my sister would take care of the cookies-and-milk-with-carrot-for-Rudolph, and no panes of glass would bear the print of my nose pressed against them as I scanned the sky for a sleigh, as I closed my eyes and strained to listen for jingle bells.

In short, I realized, I totally missed having the Christmas Jollies.

***

I’ve spent much of my adult life chasing that elusive feeling, the anticipation and the excitement and the build-up, those delicious moments during which the only certainty is that something wondrous is about to happen. Something that will strike me dumb with awe. In the pursuit of that feeling I have flown to Germany for an date, driven twice across the country to lands both new and familiar, walked through Times Square at four in the morning. I’ve moved multiple times, taken many jobs, and sought many opportunities.

I’ve found events that inspire that feeling. Perhaps the most common is the moment when a plate of delicious-smelling food is placed in front of me, my wine glass refilled; its commonality makes it no less enjoyable.

Another: the first moment of standing in a new classroom before new students, ready to face together a semesterful of learning how to write, expressing new ideas none of us have ever had before.

I’ve come to enjoy for a rare mix of nostalgia and new possibility the moments when my buddy Tim and his bands have done their mic checks, the stray chordsful of notes that are the prelude to good music and much dancing. The moments when, because of moving so far so often, I see my family and friends for the first time in a while: a good hug, a genuine smile.

The most powerful, of course, the most breathtaking, for me: undressing a beautiful woman, the slow revelation of oh-so-much ludicrously desirable skin, ready for the embracing.

Moments to live for, all. And maybe I never did forgive Timmy Collins for making Christmas excitement uncool, and maybe I never will, but maybe living well and appreciating those moments when they come really is the best revenge.

TAGS: bully, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Jollies, Glee, Hess truck, John Denver, Muppets, santa claus, True Value, Will Entrekin

Will Entrekin is a writer, professor, and Eagle Scout from New Jersey living in the New York metropolitan area. A novelist and screenwriter, Entrekin earned an MPW from the University of Southern California and is finishing an MBA from Regis University while pursuing what happens next. He can be found at his web site, willentrekin.com, and he has a self-titled collection available here. He hopes you'll check both out.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Essays, Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.