JINGLE BELLS (SANTA'S CLAUSE)

This story should make your Season bright. I told a version of this yarn at the Arizona Biltmore Storytelling event during Christmas 2014. 04/20/2016

JINGLE BELLS (SANTA’S CLAUSE)

If Santa puts you to work this Season, you have my sympathy. Speaking from personal experience, we helpers spend long hours in a state of high anxiety, brought on by our efforts to follow his garbled directions while performing our assigned tasks. The reason: Santa's toy assembly instructions are couched in a language known only to his foreign-born elves. I never got the message. Me "No Habla Claus."  Me “Nein Sprechen Sie Claus.”

   My six kids were easier to assemble than the jolly playthings Santa gave them every year. The children grew up in the mistaken belief that Santa delivered the goods already assembled. Had they witnessed my hapless efforts to finish what he had left undone, they would not have asked him for so many items. "Some assembly required" is known as the “Santa Clause.”

   Santa's helpers may not commence working until all the resident toddlers are asleep. My gang always stayed up late to help decorate the tree. Consequently, it was my lot to complete final assembly on the graveyard shift in a race against time. The pressure was intense. Would I even be able to FIND all the toys that were bought in June, hidden for safekeeping, let alone set them up?  Would I finish before my brood came bursting out of their beds?  With the passage of years, would I be able to offer new proof to the more skeptical family members?  Had Santa come down the flue and left all these wonderful presents?

   Santa insisted his toys could be assembled with screwdriver and pliers. He never mentioned the tools I had to use, such as a hammer, a saw, a chisel, and much elbow grease. Nor the verbal abuse I heaped on him in the process.

   Once, dear Santa outdid himself. He dropped off three bicycles, two dollhouses, a picnic table complete with chairs and benches, an outdoor gym set, plus a giant cardboard replica of a San Francisco cable car. It was roomy enough for all six offspring to gong around in at the same time. I told Santa's agent I was not a magician, and would need the skill of Dr. Frankenstein to bring these monsters to life before dawn. This ruthless overseer said, "Christmas only comes once a year, so get hopping.”  My feelings toward Santa were never the same afterwards.

   Why is it that at three in the morning Tab A is missing; Tab B is bent; Tab C is inserted where only Tab D should venture; one table leg appears to be malformed; and the hardware list doesn't match up with the contents in the little plastic bag. Evidently, Pal nuts are no pals of mine, nor are spring washers, lock nuts, knurled pins, or special rods that have reverse metric threads.

   "Insert this side first" is such a silly instruction. Anyone can see that it should not make any difference, until five steps later, when one discovers it brings the project to a grinding halt. And have you ever noticed it takes longer to disassemble your work than it did to get that far?

   "See diagram 7."  Beware of that one. It shows three squiggle lines that merge into some meaningless dark shape labeled ‘Main Brain.’  What it means, of course, is that I have to use my imagination, and that involves the hammer and grease, see paragraph above. At this time my language skills come into full force, as I recite a mantra of profanity. My exasperation begins to peak.

Then I encounter the most precise and helpful instruction the elves have concocted: "Shove Item 10 into Item 20."   This I savvy and do so with gusto, breaking one or the other or both in the process. At this point outright humiliation sets in. Wife appears, docile and meek, reads instructions, and promptly assembles the dollhouse with a screwdriver. That's my wife for you, one smart cookie. She knows her Phillips head from a flat blade. Smart, yes, but insufferable at five in the morning.

   That year was special. We had just moved to a house that featured a beautiful white block fireplace, never used. Before the children awoke, I taped a large red plastic bag inside the chimney. The bottom half hung down, giving the impression that Santa had left post haste. When the kids arose and saw this colorful evidence of Santa's visit, they overlooked that many of their new toys were askew or bent out of shape. They thought Santa was quite a guy.

   Even though Claus made a bundle that Christmas, he continues to ply his trade. Wouldn't you think some year he would announce his retirement, learn to sleep-in late, and just mail out cards?  It would be a boon to me. Here I am, generations later, still hard at work trying to decipher his assembly hieroglyphics on behalf of my great-grandchildren. Excuse me for now. Gotta go. Where the @#$%&* is that hammer?

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J..