santa died for your toys

Recently I was asked to be Santa Claus at a Christmas party in the town of Nagano. That was about as surreal as I’ve gotten on this trip. When I was handed a bag with a red suit and told, “get changed” I felt all this weird apprehensionwelling come up. I guess that I have some unresolved issues with the whole thing. Gotta admit, there just ain’t a whole lot of St. Nicholas to my character, but I gave it the good college try. My friend Berto was dressed up like one too, but I thought with the beard he looked more like a quixotic throwback. I thought it might prove a little confusing for the bambinos to see two Sandy Clauses, but no one batted an eye. Yeah, fun and games for a couple of hours. Ever feel like you had to carry the soul of Christmas? There isn’t as much as a charge around the holidays here, so it didn’t have the same punch as it would be back home. I’ve seen the look on children’s faces when Santa shows up and it is very magical and the air becomes electrical. Here it was like, “who’s that crazy white dude in the red suit”? Kinda like it better that way actually, it’s easier to break character without any prior references or demands to conduct a “ho-ho-ho” symphony. Hopefully a first and last on that gig!
On one of our ice cream breaks, my friend and I talked about writing a story/comicbook about Santa living the life of Jesus. Berto kept saying the rest to children of the day “Santa died for your toys”. It would be brilliant. It would take place in the North Pole, he has a shop and starts looking for elves (disciples), one betrays him to sell Santa’s designs to an overseas firm. Santa could have his 40 days of passion on a frozen tundra and he could be tempted by the devil with cheap labor and bad toys. He’d get crucified right before Christmas, but would come back Christmas Eve to do his toy run. If we start now, we should have something by next Christmas. Maybe I should just write a screenplay and take it to Hollywood! Unfortunately, religion being what it is, some crazy fundamentalist would probably try to kill me. Could you imagine how many people it would upset? It might start a whole new religion! Now there’s where the real bucks are to be had!