A brush with an old sage:

Christmas 1934

by Hal Swift

I look back with fondness on Christmas, 1934, for a couple reasons.  One, Santa gave me a real steam engine as a present that year.  And, two, he gave Paul Roberts, the local bully, somethin' none of us kids expected he'd ever get.

My birthday is a week before Christmas--I was six that year, and really looking forward to my party.   However, my Mom invited Paul to it, because she believed there was some good in everyone--even Paul.

Of course, she didn't know him like us kids did.  He wasn't just mean, he was sneaky.  Like for instance, the time he let Widow Wilson's goat into the yard where her laundry was hangin', and the goat pulled it all down, ate some of it, and got the rest of it really torn up and dirty.  Then Paul let on like me and my buddy Arthur Cummins was the ones who did it.

Widow Wilson came and told our moms and, when Arthur and me tried to explain, nobody believed us and we had to slop the hogs and muck out the barn for a month to make up for what dirty, rotten old Paul'd done.

We would've loved to have gotten even with Paul, but he always seemed to be about a quarter of a mile ahead of us, and whatever we did wouldn't work, and then he'd laugh at us, and shove us down in a pile of wet cow manure, and leave us to try to explain to our moms what happened.  Both our moms thought we made up those stories about Paul, and warned us what would happen to little boys who told fibs.  It had something to do with Heaven's Alternative, a place I don't even like to think about.

Meanwhile, though, Arthur and me wanted to get even with Paul so much we could taste it.  Well, not really taste it, but we spent an awful lot of time thinkin' about just how sweet it'd be to really put him in a hole so deep and so hard that he'd not be able to climb out of it for a hundred years.  We never dreamed he'd dig the hole himself, and that Santa would be the one to put him in it.

So, anyway, at my birthday party, Paul started pullin' us kids aside by ones and twos, and tellin' us there ain't no Santa Claus--that it's just some ol' man dressed up in a Santy suit. Well, some of the smaller kids started cryin' and, when my mom or theirs would ask them why, of course they wouldn't tell.  Partly because they didn't want their folks to think they didn't believe in Santa Claus any more, but mostly because Paul said he'd beat the snot out of anybody who told on him.

One of the boys there was Billy Mutchler, whose dad was a fireman.  All of us kids liked Billy, and his dad, too.  Once, Billy took a bunch of us with him to the firehouse, and his dad let us help him warsh and wax the fire engine.

Paul got to join in, but only because he happened to be walkin' past the firehouse and saw all of us inside, laughin' and havin' fun.

He came in for a while, but when he found out we were workin', he remembered somethin' important he had to do someplace else, and left.  Which didn't make any of the rest of us unhappy in the least bit.

Well, after Paul left, we kids all got to talkin'.  Of course, the subject came up about Paul tellin' us that Santa Claus wasn't real, and some of the smaller kids started cryin' and told Billy's dad they were sick, and could they go home.  Mister Mutchler said he reckoned as how they could, and he had a kind of look on his face that--thinkin' back on it--seems now like he may have had some notion of what was goin' on.  Then, like most of the mischief Paul-the-Bully caused for us, we all forgot about it by Christmas.

I'll never forget that Christmas as long as I live.  Santa Claus actually came to our house two nights before, and sat on the big old overstuffed sofa and drank a couple cups of coffee mom'd just happened t'make, and talked to all of us, and asked what we wanted him to bring us for Christmas.  Betty, my little sister, was just dumbstruck--which for her was something, because she was usually talking all the time.

But, y'know?  There was somethin' about Santa Claus that seemed to me to be, well, you know, familiar.  I don't know what it was.  I couldn't place it.  That night, I had kind of a strange dream.  I dreamed I was at the firehouse, and Santa Claus was helpin' us to warsh and wax the fire engine.  And Billy's dad wasn't there.

Well, the next day, I was cleanin' my room and doin' a good job of it because Christmas was getting' closer every minute, when Mom called for me to come downstairs, that I had company.  Well, you could've knocked me over with a feather--the company was old Paul-the-Bully Roberts standin' there in the parlor, and he looked like he'd been cryin'. 

Turns out, he had been.

Paul said he wanted to apologize for tellin' me and all the other kids that Santa Claus wasn't real.  Mom's eyebrows went up like a couple of exclamation marks because she had no idea Paul had done that.   As for me, my chin dropped--as they say--dang near to the floor.  I kind of had the feeling that maybe some Christmas spirit had somehow gotten

into Paul, that this was what was makin' him "confess to his transgression," as Pastor Stanton used to say.  And, maybe that's what happened.

Paul ended his apology with a warning to me never to go around sayin' that Santa Claus isn't real, or he--Santa Claus--is liable to come to my house and spank my behind the way he'd done Paul.

Well, now, it was my turn to be dumbstruck.  I knew if I laughed, my Mom would probably spank my behind for being rude to Paul, so I coughed and choked it down.  Mom took it that I was receiving the news real seriously, and patted me on the head, and said to thank Paul for comin' over.  She said it was a brave thing he did, admitting his mistake.

Brave nothin'!  He told us later that Santa Claus told him that'd he'd know if he didn't take it seriously about gettin' his behind whupped, and he--Santa Claus--would come give 'im another dose.

The upshot of the whole thing was good.  After that Christmas, Paul would try to pull some kind of mean, sneaky trick on the rest of us, and we'd just laugh and say, "You better be good or Santa Claus'll come beat your behind."

Some of the more adventurous boys would get Paul down and rub his nose in a cow pie.  Then he was the one who had to go home and explain to his mom why he was so dirty and stinky.

Y'know?  Thinkin' back on it nowadays, it seems as though Santa Claus and Mister Mutchler's voices sounded an awful lot alike.  Naturally, I'd never say that out loud.  Just in case, you know, that the ol' boy really is listenin' and might come around and beat my behind some Christmas.

I reckon I'm too old for 'im to do that now.  But then... y'just never know.

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For more about the origin of the celebration of Christmas, you might try this

Information Please website:  http://www.infoplease.com/spot/christmas1.html.

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(Ed. Note:  For a closer look at Hal Swift's cowboy poetry, go to http://www.cowboypoetry.com/halswift.htm )

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