Christmas Tape

"Christmas is a time to believe in things you can't see." So goes the slogan of a certain Minnesota company that makes an "invisible" kind of cellophane tape.

Her voice had that aura of ominousness about it. 

"You better watch out, you better not cry."

My activity of the hour would be impeded.  Halted.

"Better not pout, I'm telling you why."

That voice.  That song.  That angst of near five-year-old little boy.

"He knows if you've been bad or good."

There it is again . . . Christmas is a time to believe in things you can't see.  

Jesus already knows if I am bad or good.  Santa must be Jesus.   Maybe Jesus is Santa in a bathrobe.

I can't imagine the mischief I was doing to illicit that song.  She would start singing it shortly after Halloween, after my getting over the tummy aches from too much candy. 

Maybe I was, again, unwinding the toilet paper, sticking in an extra cardboard tube that I had secretly saved, inserting it down about toilet seat level, then winding the toilet paper up and over the top of the existing roll.  All to make it unroll like a block and tackle system on a big crane.  Sometimes there were two additional pulleys added.  Mother had no appreciation for things mechanical.

Or taking all of the cans and boxes out of the cupboard and setting up a store in the living room.  Using the silverware insert from the kitchen drawer as a cash register to hold and separate the cut out and colored play money.

"Oh, you better watch out!"

Salvation by works.  Christmas presents being the tangible manifestation of perfection.  To complicate the anxiety, my birthday was Christmas Eve.

"He's making a list, and checking it twice."

Or hoping I wouldn't be caught, again, hiding in the closet with a spoon and the package of brown sugar, rationalizing that if I ate the sugar fast enough, then the  worms wouldn't have time to grow in my teeth.

"So be good, for goodness sake!"

Or pulling out the old Filter Queen vacuum cleaner with its hose attached to the top.  It was so much better than Brian's Electrolux vacuum cleaner because the Filter Queen was on four wheels and made the perfect fire engine.  Racing up and down the hall going to a fire would prompt "Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice," which added to the confusion about fire fighters and being nice. 

The modus operandi of both Jesus and Santa was indistinguishable.  Omniscient.  Omnipresent.  Omnipotent.  The aura of Santa Claus was being in the here and now.  The aura of Jesus was standing off somewhere in heaven, holding a lamb in his arms with a lion lying at his feet.  Little children with wings playing nearby.  Christmas is a time to believe in things you can't see.

As the winter coldness and darkness settled in, sometime in mid-December, the ride to down town Calgary on the trolley bus was couched in wonderment and suspense.  Just the thrill of being a part of the big old trolley bus was enough, but there were still adventures to be relished ahead. We would go first to The Bay between 7th and 8th Ave and 2nd Street S.W.  Of course, there was the obligatory trip to the toy department.  Past the counters of perfume and ladies purses to the bank of elevators on the far wall.  Watching for the light at the top of the sliding door, and waiting for the 'ding' when the elevator arrived.  Entering and absorbing the details of how the uniformed young lady would slide the brass gate with all of its unfolding hinge components to secure us safely inside, then push the big wheel with the handle forward to make the elevator go up, and call out the floor number and departments at each stop.  We arrived at the toy floor with its sprawling lot of pedal cars, a working Lionel train set, boxes of Meccano sets,  Slinky's, sets of Laurentian colored pencils, and racks of color books. The assortment of Golden Books, teddy bears, police cars with friction motors and sparking red lights, Snakes and Ladders, and balsa wood airplane kits with instructions that had big unknowable words like fuselage.  Cap guns with rhinestone holsters, doctor's bag kits, hockey sticks, tobaggons, and Dinky Toys.  Oh! The Dinky Toys, with their exquisitely detailed little embodiments for vivid little-boy role-playing imagination.   Of course, the wish book had come way back in the summer, and I had devoted hours and hours to imagining the rewards of both heaven and earth.  I had made my list, and checked it many more times than just twice.   Somehow, my mother's singing confused me as to which list was actually involved.  Santa's list, or Jesus' list, or my list.  They were the same, weren't they?  Or maybe not. 

"He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!

I had never seen a Jesus in a department store.  But there, at the far end of the toy department was the manifestation of the earthly temple of god.  The god who knew.  The god who could deliver.  There he was, sitting there, high on his throne.  Accolades of angels dressed as elves ministering to his every need.  Santa Claus was already in town.

Still, the torment of not knowing if Santa would come to my house.  My mother's singing seemingly never far away to reinforce the doubt.  We didn't have a chimney but plausible work-arounds had satisfied me.  Would his checked list for me have checks beside the naughty or the nice?  Would I have been good enough? Would I be found worthy?  Would there be any reward for me?

We walked out from The Bay into the frigid air to notice the clouds of near frozen water vapor erupting from tailpipes of cars squeaking down the snowdrift-lined main street.  We shuffled down 8th Avenue, past Henry Birk's and Sons jewelry store with their little blue lights ringing the bullet-proof glass  of their display windows. 

We side-stepped the lady in the long black coat ringing a bell beside a red hanging pot at the entrance of Woolworth's, and entered into the store to get an egg salad sandwich on white with tomato juice at their lunch counter.  Finding two seats together, mother wedged little sister's stroller between.  My examining the waitress in her white uniform, the little pointed apron, her hairnet in place and her cap on her head holding her up-trussed hair in place.  Her little order pad of green paper, how I wanted a supply of little order pads of green lined paper just like that.  Then to watch her compose the sandwiches.  Extract the bread from a bread box.  Lay out the slices.  Use a little scoop to dip the egg salad mixture from a row of containers with stainless steel lids.  Cut the sandwiches in diagonal quarters and arrange them on the plates with two quarters sticking upright, anchored on each side by a quarter lying on it's side.  A little sprig of parsley for decoration,  fresh parsley no less, even in that bitter cold of winter.  Watching her pouring the tomato juice into tall, thin glasses.  And to observe in amazement her dexterity in delivering our order to our spot at the linoleum-topped counter.  Gingerly I picked up one of the little sandwiches.  The bread was soft and gooy.  The egg salad moist and cold and delectably sweet, and almost pure white like there were no yolks at all in the mix.  Sometimes, there would be a piece of lettuce incorporated.  

Then to Zeller's. There for me to find and to then point to the display bin of bulk candy and order 10 cents worth from the old lady dressed in her starched white uniform, her hairnet in place, her coiffed hair crowned with her little elf cap. I listened to the swosh of the scoop as she thrust it into the bin of Smarties*, then the cascading rattle of candies being dumped on the big scale equipped with the sweep hand referencing a dozen price/per ounce combinations. I watched her titrate out the 10 cents worth . . . and with a motherly wink, a tiny bit more.  With dexterity, she transferred the little colored candies into a little white paper sack and my exchange of dime for treat was completed.  

Ten cents worth of Smarties was far to much for me to eat at one time, so it was only the taste of a treat, to be finished over the next couple of days.  But for now, it was off to look at mittens and hats and scarves in Newberrys. 

Even in the early 1950's, there was the onset of the ravages of consumermas with the silly little Christmas songs of reindeer and snowmen crooned by Bing Crosby and Perry Como and Gene Autry, interspersed with the godly standbys of Little Town of Bethlehem and Oh Holy Night and We Three Kings and Hark! Let the Heralds Sing!  Those festive sounds rounded out the sights of flashing lights and garlands of holly and twinkling tinsel and clerks sporting caps snitched from elves.  The essence of cinnamon and cloves and spruce unblocking stuffed up noses. 

We finally got to the other anchor store two full blocks west of The Bay, that being The T. Eaton Company.  There!  Proof of the omnipresence and therefore the omniscience of Santa Claus.  He was everywhere.  No wonder he could know if I was sleeping, or if I was awake, or if I was being bad or good, or being good for goodness sake.

It was the lap of the Eaton's Santa Clause that I climbed up into to recite my little list of things expected from him, him being the tangible surrogate of Jesus.

Christmas is a time to believe in things you can't see.  So goes the slogan of a certain Minnesota company that makes an "invisible" kind of cellophane tape.

With a hardy "HO! HO! HO! You be a good little boy now," I descended from the throne of the all mighty, questioning, for the first time in my life.

It was then, with the innocence only a little boy can muster, I dared ask the question that is never to be asked or answered. 

Why was Santa's beard held on by Scotch tape?

The Refectory Manager

* Smarties is the Canadian equivalent of M&M's.