When I learned Santa doesn't operate a needs-based organization

Christmas morning, 1973—there was no money, no presents, and nothing left to lose

It was December 25, 1973. I was seven years old. Three years earlier, my grandparents, Olivette and James—he went by Jimmy—had adopted me. Growing up with economic hardship, I became especially fond of Santa Claus because, the way I saw it, Christmas was the one time of year when we didn’t have to worry about money. Santa brought toys for free, which meant presents wouldn’t burden my grandparents. I always asked for things that helped me make other things, and imagined I could one day sell my handiwork and “help out.”

I thought of Santa as a kind of planetary social program we were duty-bound to use. When the Sears catalog arrived after Thanksgiving, I studied it for weeks, marking toys I thought would pay dividends all year: looms, rock tumblers, clattering little “sewing machines” that glued fabric instead of stitching it.

This Christmas in 1973 would be the last time I believed in Santa’s social program.

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My grandparents were ill-suited for parenting even when it came to their own children. I wasn’t their child, and Olivette never pretended I was. My place was as her comrade, sidekick, and partner in crime.

My grandfather had recently had open-heart surgery at Shands—I always thought they were saying “Sands”—after a major heart attack on his daily walk. He had just taken up walking “to get healthy,” and Olivette never missed the chance to say, “A lot of good that did you.” Her wit belonged in the mouth of a detective’s girl Friday. Despite barely finishing eighth grade, she’d worked as a legal secretary and gotten her real estate license as soon as women were allowed; her résumé flowed directly from her attitude. It didn’t hurt that she had also been a model.

Her sensibilities were tempered by the Great Depression, but her persona was forged when her parents abandoned her and her younger sisters after the Great Miami Hurricane in 1926. She was an orphan too—only worse off, in my view, because she remembered being left. I was abandoned at the hospital and had the dubious good fortune of never knowing my “real” family. I was more than her little partner; I was her reflection. From the time I was born, I rode shotgun on every caper, whether it was grocery shopping or something more elaborate.

This year was especially hard. After the heart attack, the surgery, and the loss of my grandfather’s income, we discovered that he didn’t qualify for Social Security. He fell into a “donut hole,” which meant his benefits would be postponed for years, even though he was well over 65 and effectively disabled.

Because of all that, the family dragged its feet on Christmas. By Christmas Eve, no one had put up our scraggly little artificial tree. I’d been sick with a fever all week, and when it finally broke that afternoon, I panicked. Without a Christmas tree, I was sure we were in real danger of Santa passing us over, and losing the one time of year we could get presents without adding to the bills. I pleaded with the adults to put up the tree. They sat in their living room chairs, unmoved by my impeccable 7-year old logic.

Realizing my adoptive parents weren’t going to do it, I decided I’d seen enough Christmases to handle it myself. The only problem was that everything was stored on a high shelf near the ceiling.

Now I had to find something to stand on. It turned out to be a dresser from the other side of the room. I knew I couldn’t lift it, but after pushing at it for a few minutes I discovered I could lean my weight into it and slide it. Bonus: it didn’t make much noise. I didn’t want anyone to know what I was doing until the tree was already underway.

The next hurdle was getting the boxes down. I didn’t know how heavy they were. I climbed onto the dresser and nudged them; they were light enough to shove off the edge and onto the bed. I hauled them open and took inventory. The lights were a hopeless tangle, as they were every year. At the bottom of a worn-out cardboard box were red and green shards from ornaments that had been packed away carelessly. There’s nothing quite as sad as broken Christmas ornaments at the bottom of a box.

I came up with a plan. I didn’t have much time, but I could make the tree beautiful if I kept the color scheme simple: only blue lights and white ornaments. My favorite lights were a set of blue bulbs wrapped in frosty five-pointed stars, and I always thought the multicolor strands distracted from their importance. By now I was practically vibrating. I was proud of muscling the boxes down, but even more thrilled with the design: an all blue tree that needed fewer ornaments, less work, and—if I moved quickly—no adult supervision. Everything was coming together so neatly that it seemed obvious I was saving Christmas.

No way Santa could pass by our house now.

When I marched the tree out to its place on top of the planter that separated the living room from the dining room, my grandparents kept their eyes fixed on the TV news. It was like someone had cut the power to them.

Just one more thing, though. I realized I should’ve put the angel on the top of the tree before I placed the tree on the planter and put the lights on. Now I had to find something to stand on, which turned out to be one of the swiveling dining room chairs. This was the trickiest part of the whole endeavor, because the chairs didn’t want to stay still, so instead of relying on the chair to hold me up the entire time, I used it to hop on top of the planter and put the angel on the tree’s apex without incident.

Still standing on the planter, I asked if I could have everyone’s attention, then took a deep bow and said “TA DAAAA” gesturing to the completed tree. I explained my design theory and how using just the blue lights were key to making the whole project come together. My grandmother said something to the effect of “very nice,” while my grandfather looked over the newspaper to mutter “yes indeed” in his odd English gentleman manner.

After all the scheming, designing and assembling, I was exhausted. Lying in my bed, I realized it was the first Christmas Eve I could remember that I was actually sleepy. It would also the first year I didn’t look out the window for the reindeer, or wake up every hour to check the clock, because I knew there was no way Santa could pass us up now.

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When I woke up at first light, just a few minutes before 7am on December 25, 1973 and it was one of those heavy, socked-in Florida mornings that flops down like a damp towel on a tile floor. It got cold overnight but instead of a cold front that brings Technicolor blue skies, this one seeped into house like an unwelcome guest. I was freezing and didn’t know which pile of clothes my sweater was under. Digging around I found a pair of socks to put on and layered a long sleeve shirt over my pajamas.

The oppressive weather made the living room seem extra dingy. Olivette hated cleaning due to the fact that she was put to work cleaning houses as a child. If I had a quarter for every time she said “I’m not your servant,” I could’ve paid for college out of pocket. The only “heat” we had was a gas “fireplace” nestled between the dusty bookshelves. It was the kind of “faux” fireplace that was used for ambiance, its tiny flames licking the ecru-colored “breeze blocks” that echoed the material used in the planter. I really wanted to light it but I’d already tested everyone’s boundaries enough, and had no idea where I’d find matches.

Typically I wasn’t the first one awake. Olivette would usually have her second up of coffee made by now, but she was still in bed.

I was too scared to look under the tree on the planter for presents. It seemed like bad faith to peek first thing, so I decided to take note of the surroundings evidence of any traces Santa left behind. The hearth by the faux fireplace had a thick layer of undisturbed dust, so that could be ruled out. Besides, we didn’t have a chimney and it never made much sense that Santa would gain entry through there. Florida’s lack of fireplaces, chimneys, and snow seemed like a fairly big logistical issue for Santa. In years past I worried that he had no where to land a sleigh.

Then I realized the glass sliding door would be the most likely entry for clandestine entry to the house. I noticed one of the doors wasn’t completely closed and was elated. Santa uses the sliding doors in Florida! Of course he does! Everyone has sliding glass doors and they’re impossible to lock (as far I knew).

This gave me the courage to look at the planter for presents, but in the dark it looked just like it did the night before—grungy and sad. I plugged in the blue star lights but now the cool glow made everything seem extra gloomy.

I felt a lump in my throat as I realized that my bid to save Christmas had failed. My breath started to catch, but I didn’t want to cry because the entire reason for this was to spread joy. Taking deep breaths to gather myself I went to deliver the news to Olivette and see if she knew what happened or what I did wrong.

Tiptoeing silently into her room I saw that she was lying on her side. She didn’t seem awake, but she didn’t seem asleep either. When I got closer I could tell her eyelashes were clumped like they’d been wet and sensed that she already knew things had gone awry.

Climbing on the bed next to her I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to say. I wanted to comfort her but how do you do that while delivering bad news?

“I’m sorry…it didn’t work,” I started. “I thought Santa would know how difficult it’s been and much it would mean to us. With everything that’s happened I thought we’d be pretty far up on Santa’s list.” I’d assumed that Santa operated a needs-based organization.

“Does Santa even do Florida? How does he land the sleigh without snow?”

My line of reasoning opened up multiple avenues for her to gloss things over. I needed to have this conversation but I wasn’t exactly ready to get a 150-proof shot of rejection. Her eyes were fixed on something a mile away and it became obvious that I was in uncharted water. I was afraid of what she was going to say, and then it was so long before she said anything that I was thinking of reasons to excuse myself. But when she spoke I heard every word. I still hear those words.

In the smallest voice I’d ever heard her use, she said: “We tell horrible lies to children.” It was almost like she was picking up in mid-conversation with someone else I couldn’t see—someone in that far off place she had her eyes fixed on. “We’re all in on it,” she continued weakly. “We hide…that…the world doesn’t care about children. And that’s the truth.”

I needed a concrete answer. “Why didn’t Santa visit though?”

In her stronger, more familiar proclamation voice: “Christmas presents come from money and this year there is no money.”

There I had it. Santa wasn’t real, but that wasn’t the worst part. She was showing me that she was sad, and she was hiding why she was sad. Something big and bad happened, and she wasn’t going to tell me what it was. It felt like failure because it felt like a bigger version of what I was already feeling.

I became fixated on the Santa Claus subterfuge. It seemed impossible. “So…all the parades in all the places…and decorations downtown…the TV specials, Christmas cards…the commercials—none of it’s real?”

“That’s right and it’s cruel. We shouldn’t do it, we wouldn’t do it if we were better people.”

Suddenly a gear clicked in my brain. I felt my face flush and another lump growing in my throat and whispered, “and…Jesus?”

“That too—in fact that’s worse. It’s different but the same…and worse.”

She was spilling all the beans. This was stuff kids weren’t supposed to know, and yet she was holding something back. But it seemed okay. I’d had quite enough truth already and it was still early in the morning.

Seeing that Olivette was “in a state,” I suggested that she start her coffee and I could make cinnamon toast. It was best to leave the religion conversation until later. She was in one of those moods where everything is crap and I could’ve asked her how she felt about rainbows and she’d have said, “they never last.” This was also the reason I was never supposed to pick flowers.

Now that she was at least talking I wanted her to get up. She couldn’t mope around all day on Christmas—especially on this particular Christmas.

“It’s not a total loss,” I said. “We still have presents to open from Aunt Judy.” There were indeed three immaculately wrapped gifts from my aunt in Tennessee. I felt bad that they always sent presents to us and we never sent presents to them. Olivette said they knew we couldn’t afford presents. Then she’d say something like “Judy was the pretty one. She married a doctor.” Inevitably followed by, “your mother was the smart one.” Her world hung together through oppositions.

Knowing something that only adults know made me feel more grown up. None of my classmates knew that Santa wasn’t real, and I wasn’t gonna tell them either.

We sat on the low-slung celery-colored couch with our packages. Mine was thin like a book. Hers was a satisfying cube. They were both tied with curling ribbon and adorned with poof-balls handmade from the same curled ribbon. I thought about how “extra” Aunt Judy’s wrapping always seemed. Olivette taught me how department store clerks wrap gifts, so I had the basics down, but Aunt Judy took it to the next level. It seemed a shame to rip up all her handiwork.

I wondered what my three cousins’ Christmas was like. They lived in the mountains. I figured they had snow and would all go outside and sled or throw snowballs. I wanted to know what that was like.

Clearing the wrapping paper off revealed that Aunt Judy had sent a book of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis paper dolls.

With her usual sardonic grin and finally with a lilt in her voice my grandmother said, “that’s a terrible gift! Who plays with paper dolls at your age?”

I laughed and said, “It’s better than what YOU got me!” It felt harsh to say, but as repartee, I could own its sharp edge with a smirk.

She was feeling better but, I was still just a kid and her “gift” that morning felt less like truth and more like a small disaster: no Santa, no Jesus, no conspiracy of adults bending the world toward children’s happiness—just money and the lack of it, just bodies that give out, just women who drink too much coffee and get up earlier than they want to so other people can eat.

But sitting in that tiny living room bathed in blue light something in me shifted. I could feel the collapsing foundation under all the stories, and beneath it there was something harder and stranger than faith: resilience. Our own stories are far more powerful than those received through others. That year, Santa brought me something that no one could ever take away.

I didn’t have words for it yet, but that morning was the first time I understood that adults curate reality—that they choose which fictions to pass down and which to break. My grandmother, who’d been handed plenty of pretty lies and ugly truths herself, chose that day to hand me the uglier thing. It hurt. It still hurts. But it also gave me a place to stand.

Years later, when I was studying philosophy and art, publishing my own newspaper, then as a creative director for advertising agencies, I would recognize the shape of that morning everywhere: in the way images sell comfort, in the way slogans smuggle in belief, in the way a community agrees, silently, on which lies are acceptable. It was my first lesson in how power and narrative hold hands. But no, it wasn’t the best present a child could get.

It was a mean little miracle, wrapped badly and given too soon.

But it was mine, and I grew into it. The paper dolls ended up in a drawer; the truth stayed on the table.