A Black Santa for White Christmas

Picture this.

It is Christmas 1977. My mom and dad are arguing. I am 2. Somehow I know that I shouldn’t understand what is happening. But, yet I do. The final threads in the fabric of our family are snapping. My father is leaving. As he heads for the door, I feel an invisible tether pulling at every cell in my body. My Father and I are One. How can he go somewhere that I cannot? This is impossible. And like an episode of Star Trek, I send out a magnetic wave of energy–a tractor beam–and it grabs hold of my dad. And for a moment he stops on the stairs that lead down to the front door and out of our apartment. For the first time in my short life, I am exerting willpower. Everything inside of me commands everything in my father to not go. And I can tell he feels it.

“DON’T GO. DON’T GO. DON’T GO.”

My will is overpowering his. His mind is changing. He is turning around. He is thinking of coming back up those stairs. He looks up at me. And then I know. My dad is still a child himself. He is hurting. He cannot stay. Not even for me. I release my pull. He walks out the door. My mother collapses. I am now the “man of the house”. Everything has changed.

As my mom wails, I stand there. I don’t know what to do. Her mind is racing. Thought bubbles with visions of all of the possible futures where she and my father stay together and raise my brother and I are popping one by one. Fantasy is beaten into submission by the reality that there is nothing she can do. It is over. For all intents and purposes she has become a relational widow. And at this awareness an unseen and yet dark shroud covers the room. In later years, my mom will describe it as the moment that she became Miss Havisham from the Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations. But in that moment, the cocoon around her has not fully formed. There is still a little room for possibilities, even if not with my father. She is looking around crying and asking of no one in particular, or perhaps of God, “What am I going to do?” And that’s when according to my mother, I say, “It’s okay. I will take care of you and the baby.”

The truth is that I don’t recall saying this. Even though it was repeated so many times in the past that it feels like I remember. But, what I actually remember saying is, “Is Santa Claus still going to come?”

I had just heard about Santa Claus. I don’t know if I even knew who he was supposed to be. People had just been saying, “Are you ready for Santa Claus to come this Christmas?” And for some reason, in the midst of the despair that was choking out the light in our apartment, I thought that Santa Claus, whoever he was, was going to come and soften the blow of my dad leaving. I thought Santa could make things better. But that was not meant to be. Instead of making it better, it made things worse.

If my mom had any thoughts that someone was going to come in and save Christmas, they flew out the window at the mention of Santa Claus and in came a sense of resolve that she didn’t need anyone and especially no man to come in and do anything for her.

“What did you say?” she asked with incredulity.

“Is Santa Claus was still coming?” was my mouse-like reply.

“Oh you want to know if Santa Claus is still coming? You want to know if on the the night your daddy left us if Santa is coming? Well no. Santa is not coming. I am here. And if you think I am going to raise you by myself and buy you presents and whatever else and then give my credit to a fat White man, you have another thing coming. I am Santa Claus.”

Honestly, I didn’t get what she meant about her being Santa Claus. But, I did get that no fat White man was coming to our house that night or any night. And just like that, Christmas became meaningless to me for the next thirty years until I became a dad and had to decide how I would approach this whole Santa thing. 

Up until my daughter was born, I always knew that–in a kinder, gentler way than my mom did–I would let my children know the truth about Santa Claus. But, being in a relationship with someone whose family was all about Christmas made that conviction a little difficult. I knew what it was like for me knowing that there was no such thing as Santa Claus and having to pretend for other kids that I believed too. A couple years after my dad was gone, my mother had changed her tune and told me not to tell my younger brother what she said to me. That was a burden that I didn’t want to put on my child. And yet, I didn’t want her to be lied to and then have to undo the lie. So, we compromised to not confirm or deny it and just follow her lead. By the time she was 3 she had serious doubts and when she asked me if Santa was real and I asked, “What do you think?”, she yelled “Don’t lie to me!”. So there’s that. I had, for the most part, dodged the Santa bullet. Little did I know that over 9 years later I would have another chance.

“I Know Santa Isn’t Real. But I Like Believing”

With my youngest, I gave up and decided to just play the game. If she believed in Santa, I was just going to go along with it until she was done. But like her sister, it didn’t take long for her to see through the shenanigans. However, unlike her sister, she had an interesting perspective. When she was 3, she said to me, as I awkwardly tried to navigate the Santa questions, “I know Santa isn’t real. But, I like believing.” Besides letting me off the hook, she also revealed to me the answer to a conundrum I had been trying to make sense of all of my life about why people so often invest themselves in imaginary relationships with seemingly real people who do not live up to our expectations. Folks just like believing in magic.

Because I never believed in Santa or the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny, all of my believing has been in the context of the practical. Even in my relationship to Jesus, it is largely practical. I don’t make a big deal about miracles or any of the other things that I haven’t seen a human do in real life. My focus on Christ really comes down to how meditating on his teachings expands the moral and relational imagination in a world where so much of our interactions with others are transactional. To me, the greatest miracle in the Jesus narrative is forgiving people who are actively committing violence against you. If that miracle could be pulled off by at least a few of the folks who claim to follow him, there wouldn’t be a need for most of the other miracles.

And as far as romantic relationships are concerned, I am pretty much the same way. Watching my parents break up at “the most wonderful time of the year” was an inoculation against any fantasies about perfect magical relationships where your partner “gets you”, anticipates your feelings and desires, is your best friend, therapist, and road dog all wrapped in a package and tied with a bow. To me, that is faker than Santa Claus. But like my daughter admitted, people know these relationships aren’t real. They just like believing.

Black Santa Made a Believer Out of Me

Given all of this history, no one was more surprised than me when the magic of Black Santa Claus melted a little ice around my heart that I didn’t even know was there. What began as a novelty quite quickly turned into a healing. Watching my daughter smiling and just believing because she wanted to somehow gave the little child in me permission to believe just because I wanted to as well. Seeing her face beaming, the little boy in me who watched his daddy walk out on Christmas and instantly became more of an adult than I needed to be, reclaimed his ability to just believe because I could. It didn’t matter that I had never believed in Santa or that the first Black Santa I had seen as a kid was skinny and didn’t even have a beard. This Mile High Black Santa had made a believer out of me. So much so that I invited him on my podcast.

In this episode, you will hear the origin story of a Black Santa and how this man DC White was more than qualified for the job. You’ll hear how even when it comes to Santa Claus, representation matters and the power of small acts of kindness. Even though the “What’s So Funny About…?” Podcast typically focuses on the comedic, this episode still has a lot of laughs. But, more than that, it has joy. Something we need more of in this world. So, I hope you check it out and feel the positivity that our guest puts out into the world.