Last night we took a drive to Santa Claus Lane, a well-known extensive Christmas light display in Red Lion, Delaware that has drawn thousands of people from far and wide each Christmas for over twenty-five years.
The display is an extravant gift to the community of time, resources and “Christmas magic” – from a Mr. Faucher – whom I once read is an electrician. I can’t recall the exact number of hundreds of thousands, most likely millions, of lights…but I recall from articles past that the post office officially changed his address to “Santa Claus Lane,” he and his family start putting up lights and displays from late summer on, and his utility bill (if I recall correctly) is in the tens of thousands of dollars each Christmas season.
It had been awhile since I’d been there, having moved to Alabama five years ago and my kids being grown, but it took me back in time. I could see in my mind the ghosts of my first husand and I taking our sons there each year. The display starts after Thanksgiving , but we always looked forward to going during the last week or even Christmas Eve…because…well it gets even better folks! Mr. Faucher dresses as Santa and arrives nightly on his rooftop during the week of Christmas.
When the time approaches each night, the lights go out all at once. Through a sound system you hear the voices of an air controller sighting Santa – first near the New Castle Airport – and then in the nearby area….
This goes on for a few minutes as the announcer declares that he’s about to land…then you start hearing the playing of Bruce Springstein’s Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
A spotlight goes onto the roof and you see smoke rising…then suddenly the man in the big red suit climbs up onto the peak of the roof and playfully dances – doing the twist! At some point Mr. Fauchner – I mean Santa – raises his hands like a conductor and all at once the lights on the entire house and property turn back on!!
People are cheering and adults and children are mesmerized.
I stand with my young children like a little child and hold back tears…tears I don’t understand…tears I have even now as I write this wonderful yet melancholy memory….
…emotional tears…because, well…it’s complicated.
For many families and children, Christmas is a very confusing time. My mother was severely mentally ill – the nature of it all I cannot easily describe here but it was extremely serious, untreated and chronic. Like the child of an alcoholic or any other dysfunctional parent, the holidays were a time of a special kind of chaos and emotional stress.
I was an only child, my parents were much older (my dad 49 when I was born and my mother 39), and my young memories of Christmas invovled her not allowing us to travel to any family in western Maryland and a lot of erratic unpredictability during the Christmas season. Our house was disorganized and almost like a hoarder’s house and we were secluded in our dysfunction.
Like most children, I believed in Santa Claus. But I had a lot of anxiety over it all…I never knew when and if we’d have a tree, or how Santa would get in, or if my mother had mailed my letter to Santa on time or to the right address…..or worse yet….whether I really was as “bad” as my mother always made me feel about myself.
And then there was the arguing between my parents – my mother’s excessive spending and control of everything…doling out money to my dad from his own paycheck to get groceries (he did the shopping and cooking and cleaning and….and…) and there never being enough. Going out late on school nights so she could go get cash advances from a personal friend she had who owned a filling station in Wilmington…I’d be in my pajamas and she’d tell my dad we are going and I’d get loaded into the car. I remember being taken out at midnight to the Wilmington Post House many a night for a “bite to eat” after going to get a paycheck advance on my dad’s check from her friend and arriving back home asleep, unbuckled on the backseat of the 60’s car and my dad carrying me in to bed. On a school night, according to a neighbor.
My dad would cook on Christmas, usually we’d have a goose, duck or venison from his hunting.
For some reason the Christmas I most recall – perhaps it was the most chaotic – was when I was in 4th grade I believe. I had asked Santa for a “real Bible” (not a children’s Bible…there was a Catholic woman who watched me after school while my mother was doing all her manic, paranoid activities and she seemed concerned for me and kept giving me tracts and talking to me about Jesus and Mary. I remember she gave me a glowing picture of Jesus with a heart wrapped in thorns outside His chest that I used to stare at during the night in my room…I put my night light on it…and I wanted a “real Bible.”) And I wanted a doll, a stuffed cat and a white fur coat like all my friends had. Actually the coat may have been the year before now that I think of it.
It was already kind of confusing to me why my friends couldn’t come out and play on Christmas – they all had family and grandparents there which was really mysterious to me – but sometimes late in the day I could go to their house and see all their presents. I was confused why Santa brought them so many more cool things than I got and the process seemed so..well, heck I don’t know…smoothe??!! …and quite frankly, why Santa left me stuff like notebook paper and pencils, ha ha!
But back to that Christmas Eve when I was in 4th grade…
Quite often my mother would insist my dad take her out for one of her lengthy shopping sprees and he and I would sit in the car in a parking lot and just talk and wait for her to get done. Such was the impromtu Christmas Eve trip to John Wannemaker’s store in Wilmington that year.
Perhaps it was snowing that night…I vaguely recall…but you see Wannemaker’s in Wilmington stayed open til midnight on Christmas Eve. I think it started to snow because my dad was anxious about driving home. But it was Christmas Eve, we didn’t have a tree up or anything else…and I guess my mother decided she’d go shopping. Like late at night…real late….
First we had to do the dinner thing in the Wannemaker’s restaurant…spending money on credit that I knew we didn’t have. My dad did not have a high paying job. I heard constant talk about our utilities being late…there was enough….but not with my mother in control. I was ten years old but felt guilty with every bite…though I couldn’t put it in words then. Because…like…well…oh I can’t explain it.
Then, I remember my dad and I sitting out in the cold in that big, back, tiered lot that was like a stadium of cars as I recall(Wannemaker’s was one of the finest stores around)….at one point my mother came out to the car and brought me into the store, a place I was very familiar with.
There were people shopping and gift-wrapping and she took me into the toy department and asked me to show her which doll I liked (hair-growing Chrissy!) and so forth…and I remember going into the book department and looking at Bibles…apparently I picked an RSV version with a white leather cover and full color illustrations.
Then she probably said something like “Well let’s see if Santa brings you these.” Then she took me back out to the car to sit in the cold with my dad. Yeah…I do think it was starting to snow that night…I was tired but excited. And I was very, very anxious!! How could Santa come if we weren’t at home in bed??? We were being very, very naughty!!!
I can hear my dad probably saying “She’s going to stay in there until they kick her out of the store to close it.”
And I’m sure he was right….they’d start dimming the lights…and then I’m sure it was past midnight when she came back out to the car with a bunch of packages.
Well…I was no dummy, ha ha! In fact, apparently according to one adult I talked to in later life who knew me..I was “smart as a whip!” I smelled something very, very fishy!!
That Christmas Day I opened my presents and received everything I picked out. I kept asking if Santa was real…my friends had already said he wasn’t but I didn’t believe them.
Until that day.
When my own kids were young I was determined to always make Christmas special for them.
It was and still is a joy…and when we give our children what we were not given, there is a special kind of healing that happens. I am not a perfect mom, but when I see that I can plan and follow through and express my love to my children in a variety of ways at the holidays, it helps me affirm myself that I’m offering of myself the very best I can.
In the church we belonged to when my children were young, many people did not believe that Christians should tell their children Santa was real, and some chose to not even celebrate Christmas due to traditions that they felt had “pagan” connections.
But there were two families that had a big influence on how we learned to celebrate Christmas…the wife in the one family was known as the “Queen of Christmas” and they believed that if people who didn’t practice Christianity should get all party-lavishy then how much more should people of faith have cause for full and joyous celebration in every way possible?? The other family said that it was difficult to tell children that Santa didn’t exist when one sees him at the mall. So they would tell their children he wasn’t real but “it’s fun to pretend, isn’t it??!!”
So my first husband and I took that approach. Who knows…maybe that was weird too and mind-messing in some way…kind of double speak…l’d wrap presents in Santa paper and put “from Santa” and we’d leave out cookies and write wish letters and watch Christmas movies (building family traditions) and all that…but every so often I’d just remind them “you know we are pretending about Santa, right?? Isn’t this so fun??!! But remember the real reason we celebrate is the birth of Jesus.”
Oh, and we’d make Jesus a birthday cake. I’d gather every idea from others that I could to make it really special. And somewhere along the line…visiting the Faucher’s light display and waiting in the long line for the kids to sit on Santa’s lap (Mr. Faucher, after coming off his roof, has his garage open with a painted piano, reindeer collars, fireplace, a big chair, a “North Pole” sign…etc…) became our yearly thing.
My sons are now twenty-eight and almost twenty-four.
Last night as I stood on the driveway peering into that timeless little converted-garage Santa room….I remembered the best year we ever had there! I had done a calligraphy piece for a friend with a quote from Jim Elliot: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose” for a friend, and had scanned and made prints of it. That I had a scanner, tells me that was probably in 2000…my oldest would have been eleven and my youngest six. (Although on second thought perhaps it was pre-scanner…maybe I re-did Mr. Faucher an original piece…hmmm…)
I matted and framed one of the prints and wrapped it as a gift to Santa. When my boys got to sit with Santa (yeah, my oldest was…well…old….but he stood there while his brother did it!) I told them they were to give the present to Santa.
Mr. Faucher – I mean Santa – was so surprised!! He opened it and read it in front of us…and I thanked him for all he was doing for so many. I remember he was very touched.
So last night…I was walking around the driveway thinking of so much, when I went down and stood next to the donation box that he has at the end of the driveway which he puts out to help offset some of his costs. Next to me was a little girl about five years old and her mother.
Now, we all have our story…our background, our situation, our life experiences….that drive us to some of the things we believe and do. So please don’t misunderstand, I don’t mean to judge the conversation I overheard….but I did take note of it and found it striking on a whole other level.
Little girl: “What will happen if I put my dollar in?”
Mom: “You won’t get it back.”
Little girl stands there a moment, then backs away.
Grandom (I suppose) is standing nearby and says: “But I will can give you more dollars.”
I am not sure what happened next…I saw and heard the grandmom as I was walking away…
Maybe we should each imagine how this ended – in a positive way!! Did the little girl listen to her mom or her grandmom??
I really don’t know why this mother told her little girl that. It is not what I would have told my child. Hopefully. I am not in her shoes as I contemplate and write this. But what I think and hope I would have told my child who asked what would happen if she “put her dollar into the slot in the box” (this is also striking in another sense…I wonder if she thought something would come out like in a gumball machine or a toy picker??? we live in a world of “give to get” and machines) is that “well if you put your dollar in it will help pay for all the lights Santa puts out to make you and others so happy!”
Children learn so much from those around them. I listened once to a talk that resonated quite deeply with me….the statement was made that there are two ways of looking at the world, and it was compared to the biblical text of having an “eye full of darkness” or an “eye full of light.” (Matthew 6:22)
We can see the world as a place of scarcity…where there is never enough…it is like a pie…if someone else gets a slice then there will be less for me. Or, we can see the world a generous place. A place where if something good comes to someone else our first thought isn’t “Why did THEY get that?” but rather….“If good things can happen to them then good things can happen to me too! A world where we can say “Good for you!!” (Please refer to the podcast this is from in the link at the end).
That may be how many view the world (in terms of scarcity, which results in tight-fistedness), but it is not how God’s kingdom is.
I really don’t know why this mother told her little girl that. It is not what I would have told my child. Hopefully. I am not in her shoes as I contemplate and write this. But what I think and hope I would have told my child who asked what would happen if she “put her dollar into the slot in the box” (this is also striking in another sense…I wonder if she thought something would come out like in a gumball machine or a toy picker??? we live in a world of “give to get” and machines) is that “well if you put your dollar in it will help pay for all the lights Santa puts out to make you and others so happy!”
Children learn so much from those around them. I listened once to a talk that resonated quite deeply with me….the statement was made that there are two ways of looking at the world, and it was compared to the biblical text of having an “eye full of darkness” or an “eye full of light.” (Matthew 6:22)
We can see the world as a place of scarcity…where there is never enough…it is like a pie…if someone else gets a slice then there will be less for me. Or, we can see the world a generous place. A place where if something good comes to someone else our first thought isn’t “Why did THEY get that?” but rather….“If good things can happen to them then good things can happen to me too! A world where we can say “Good for you!!” (Please refer to the podcast this is from in the link at the end).
That may be how many view the world (in terms of scarcity, which results in tight-fistedness), but it is not how God’s kingdom is.
So we celebrate the birth of Jesus…Emmanuel, “God with us.” Many celebrate yet they do not know Him….but the love of God is generously manifested in our innate desire to enact “being present” with our loved ones. Drawing together with family, friends and even strangers.
However we all know, the season can bring out both the best and worst in people, families and society.
This year, with the 4th Sunday in Advent actually being the same day as Christmas Eve, which in some more liturgical churches raises questions of how to properly order services, I was reminded of another ghost of my Christmases past…
Christmas 1983 fell on a Sunday. I was a junior in college, the dorms were closed, and I had no where to go but home with my mother until I could return to campus for winter session. I remember that being a particularly sad and lonely Christmas for me. Her house was filled with the junk of a hoarder – there was no tree, no plan, no presents, no joyful relationship, no nothing.
My father had passed when I was in high school. I recall staying up really, really late Christmas Eve that year in what had been my bedroom but was half-filled with “stuff.” I think I tried to clean, then found some pictures in boxes I was looking through. I think I was reading my Bible and journeling, maybe playing guitar and writing poetry. The next day there was a service that evening at the church I was attending (it was a non-denominational church that met on Sunday evenings in an Episcopal Church building on campus). I recall sleeping all day on Christmas… I kept waking up…first noon…then two…then four…it was growing dark again…now after five. Maybe my mother came in at some point…I finally got up. (Correction in my memory: I remember now by Christmas 1983 we were meeting in The Barn building instead…I am mixing up an Easter service earlier that year I think…I guess the service I slept through next day was in the morning. But I do remember sleeping all day long on and off until dark again on Christmas day that year…)
I had planned to go to the service alone but I just didn’t feel like it or see what the point was.
I probably got up and made myself a sandwich or something….
For every lonely or distressed person you know of during this season….there are probably a thousand more hiding in some dark place. Be a light to them in some small way!!
As some are celebrating a tax bill this week which I consider immoral….there are many that are most vulnerable in our midst who will be adversely affected. Thinking of our nation’s ghosts of Christmases to come…in a sense…we shall see how this all unfolds.
On this Christmas I am grateful for life, grateful for my family, friends and especially my church family, and grateful that I can give in a multitude of small ways. This is a season of giving. Let it continue each day.
The gospel the angels announced was “Peace on earth, good will to men.”
I like to think their hands were open…
For Related Reading and Listening
An Eye Full of Light – Podcast from Rob Bell (The Robcast)
Thank You For Reading
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