'Sandy Claws' Rides Again

Father Christmas (Santa Claus?) Bearing Gifts by Goat
(picture from article about Santa Claus in Wikipedia )

Now that the kids are grown and (mostly) moved away from the family nest--wherever that happens to rest at the moment--I miss those bedtime stories we used to enjoy together. Winter nights are especially difficult. The early onset of darkness and its companion COLD keep us inside with hours to go before we sleep.

Shall I read to you, dear? Television has no more allure. We've both exhausted our gender-determined word allowances for the day. Let's open a book--novel idea!--and see if we can kill a little time, dispel the darkness, find some meaning in life, ignore that bottle of French brandy sitting on the counter...

So we climb into bed, and I open a new favorite Christmas story. It's Bret Harte's short story "How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar." I found it in one of the red-bound, Black's Reader Service Company books that Mom gave me from Dad's extensive book collection. Now you might think it's a strange one to choose from a veritable treasure trove of stories concocted about the old fellow over hundreds of years. I guess I like it because it's not your traditional sappy story. It's written by a man whose genius captures his fellow Americans, male and female, simultaneously as the fools they are and the heroes that they become. I have to wonder. Are we really as complicated and conflicted as that? Not so easily pigeon-holed or neatly wrapped and ribboned as social and political scientists would have us be?

Better not think too much. "Do not all charms fly/ At the mere touch of cold philosophy?" (Keats, "Lamia")