IS
THERE REALLY A BLACK SANTA CLAUS?
(Yes, Virginia, there is)
Mom was talking.
“Yes, chile, you see you don’t know nuthin’. You see a Black Santa Claus over there in the
department store and you don’t think nuthin’ of it which shows me how ignorant you is. Get that piece of candy out of your mouth
‘fore I slap your face good and hard, you hear me?
“But it wasn’t always like that ‘cause there was a time
when I was a girl, there wuz no Black
Santa Claus. Each and every one of
them Santa Clauses was white, especially the beard, just as white as the finest
cotton you’ve ever seen! That’s ‘cause
the white folk, they created Santa Claus and they controlled his color and
where he could work, too.
“The white folk says Santa wuz always white ‘cause he
came from the North Pole with all that snow.
Now ain’t that some lyin’! But
that’s what they said and every Santa
Claus was always a white man when I was growin’ up. I know because my mommy and daddy didn’t let
me sit on no white man’s knee, uh-uh no way!
“Then, after the longest time—I wuz already growed
up—things finally changed. First there
was a Black Santa Claus downtown and then there was one over here in the
shopping mall. By and by there was a few
more of them until it was no longer such a big deal. Kids wanting presents didn’t seem to care,
they just wanted Santa to remember which presents they were asking for!
“Some of the Black Santas were really good with kids
because they had all that love and kindness stored up in them through all those
hard lean bitter years and naturally it just had to come out. There was only one Black Santa Claus I ever
met remember meeting who wasn’t exactly up to the job. What I mean to say is he wuz a little bit
crazy. The job got the better of him and
after a while he couldn’t do it no more but when he first started he was the
best Black Santa Claus anybody had ever seen!
“He was good with all
the kids, not just the Black kids the way that was true for some other
Black Santa Clauses. This one could make
any kid laugh and talk. He could tickle
them with his whiskers and get the children to reveal their best secret wish
for Christmas. He was very clever with
the kids’ parents too and they went away feeling like they had seen the real Santa Claus, the same as the
kids.
“He had a long white beard which was truly his own and
not a fake glue-it-on kind. He seemed to
feel winter in his bones and knew what Christmas Day meant to everybody and he
gave off warmth and light to every child who came near.
“I
knew the man myself and know he was a good man but I gotta be truthful and
admit that he had a bit of a temper.
When you come right down to it he had one of the meanest mean streaks of
any man I ever knew! And that was his
undoing of course, chile.
“You see, as he got older, he started getting a little
bit cranky and a little outspoken, what rednecks used to call “an uppity
nigger” where I grew up. I guess all
those years of being Black and pretending to be the one and only true Santa
Claus must have softened up his brain a little.
As he got older, Christmas by Christmas, he got meaner and that’s when
all the trouble started. He just didn’t
know when to keep his mouth shut.
“He moved from city to city because no department store
would keep him on for two seasons in a row: once was enough. He began moving northward until he finally
reached the land of Canada. He would
offer to play Santa Claus somewhere and the townspeople would take him up on
his offer because they didn’t know what they wuz getting themselves into. He’d do good for a while but then he began to
say nasty things he shouldn’t have been saying.
“Now that I think about it, chances are he was beginning
to go crazy but nobody knew it. You
know, like dementia or something. The
last I heard of him he was in Canada somewhere up around Hudson Bay and still
headed northward. Oh chile, you should
have heard him when he was talking like he was clean out of his head! I heard him many times and I still remember a
lot of what he said. He’d see some white
ladies passing all dressed up and he’d start in on them:
‘Good morning, ladies, how are y’all today? My my, aren’t those some fine-lookin’ furs. I wonder just how many of them tiny mink
animals do you think they had to kill to make your fine fur coat? I heard somewhere it was about 20 but as big
and fat as you is, I bet it was 50!’
“I had to chuckle at that and how them ladies hurried off
because he done insulted their feelings.
And that was his good side
when he used humor like that, not his mean side. When this Black Santa Claus I’m tellin’ you
about really got wound up, then watch out!
“Here, let me read you something. I wrote him a letter once and he wrote back:
‘Dear Big Nose, it ain’t none of your damn business why I
talk to myself or why I say mean things to passers-by. You see me doing my job and you see I can do
it as well as anybody else; better, I reckon, because I’m the real true Santa
Claus! That’s what drives me crazy and
makes me mean-spirited. Everyone assumes
because I was born with black skin that I couldn’t possibly be the real Santa Claus. That’s why I am so angry. I can pretend
to be Santa Claus in a store but I can never be the real Santa Claus, right?
‘Why, these dumb jackasses know so little of their own
planet. They’ve never been to my home at
the North Pole but they think they can tell me
what’s there! They’ve never seen me
doing my work up there when I make toys for children! Who do you think was the very first person
who stood at the North Pole? A Black
man, just like me! And if that don’t
answer your busy big nose, maybe this will: I ain’t saying mean things to
nobody, I just am telling the truth.
‘What’s
mean about the truth? That’s what Santa
Claus is supposed to do, ain’t it? Who
ever heard of a Santa Claus who tells children lies? You want me to say: “Yes child, I promise to
bring you that new red sled on Christmas morning—ha ha, kid, I’m lying to
you!” Or maybe you want me to say “As
poor as you folks is you’ll be lucky to get anything in your sock—don’t even
bother to hang one up!”
‘Them
ladies in the mink fur coats were fat and I said they was! Where do you think they get mink coats from? They kill them beautiful little mink animals just
so those lazy overstuffed big-ass hippopotamuses can come in here and slap down
their money and buy things! That’s a
disgrace and I said so. How is that
crazy talk? Instead of you scolding me
for talkin’ mean to them ladies you
should be thankin’ me for talkin’ as
kindly as I did ‘cause I could have said a whole lot worse. I didn’t say the half of what I was
thinking!’
“Well
chile, the letter goes on like that but that’s the better part of it . . . before
this here Black Santa Claus starts in with some obscenities and profanities
which your ears don’t need to hear. It
got me to thinking, after I done growed up some more, that maybe he wasn’t so bananas
after all but it just sort of looked that way.
Of course a lot of us felt like that. I wasn’t the only one who secretly admired his
honesty and laughed at his jokes.
“We
remember his good years and how he was the best Santa Claus the children ever
seen and that’s why they loved him but he didn’t make it easy for us because he
started getting worse and ever meaner. I
heard reports of him from time to time as he traveled and some of the things he
said and done. And chile, that mouth of
his just kept getting’ worse and worse!
“Now
it’s time for you to go to bed. That’s
the story of your daddy and why I married and divorced him and why he won’t be
coming ‘round here no more. Tomorrow is
Christmas Day and I want you to go to sleep and dream of what you may find in
your sock tomorrow morning. Now you get
along to bed and I’ll be in shortly to wish you nighty-night.”
“Good night, mom.” “Good night, chile.”
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