IS THERE REALLY A BLACK SANTA CLAUS?
(Yes, Virginia, there is)
Mom was talking. “Yes, chile, you see you don’t know nuthin’. You see a Black Santa Claus over there in the department store and you don’t think nuthin’ of it which shows me how ignorant you is. Get that piece of candy out of your mouth ‘fore I slap your face good and hard, you hear me?
“But it wasn’t always like that ‘cause there was a time when I was a girl, there wuz no Black Santa Claus. Each and every one of them Santa Clauses was white, especially the beard, just as white as the finest cotton you’ve ever seen! That’s ‘cause the white folk, they created Santa Claus and they controlled his color and where he could work, too.
“The white folk says Santa wuz always white ‘cause he came from the North Pole with all that snow. Now ain’t that some lyin’! But that’s what they said and every Santa Claus was always a white man when I was growin’ up. I know because my mommy and daddy didn’t let me sit on no white man’s knee, uh-uh no way!
“Then, after the longest time—I wuz already growed up—things finally changed. First there was a Black Santa Claus downtown and then there was one over here in the shopping mall. By and by there was a few more of them until it was no longer such a big deal. Kids wanting presents didn’t seem to care, they just wanted Santa to remember which presents they were asking for!
“Some of the Black Santas were really good with kids because they had all that love and kindness stored up in them through all those hard lean bitter years and naturally it just had to come out. There was only one Black Santa Claus I ever met remember meeting who wasn’t exactly up to the job. What I mean to say is he wuz a little bit crazy. The job got the better of him and after a while he couldn’t do it no more but when he first started he was the best Black Santa Claus anybody had ever seen!
“He was good with all the kids, not just the Black kids the way that was true for some other Black Santa Clauses. This one could make any kid laugh and talk. He could tickle them with his whiskers and get the children to reveal their best secret wish for Christmas. He was very clever with the kids’ parents too and they went away feeling like they had seen the real Santa Claus, the same as the kids.
“He had a long white beard which was truly his own and not a fake glue-it-on kind. He seemed to feel winter in his bones and knew what Christmas Day meant to everybody and he gave off warmth and light to every child who came near.
“I knew the man myself and know he was a good man but I gotta be truthful and admit that he had a bit of a temper. When you come right down to it he had one of the meanest mean streaks of any man I ever knew! And that was his undoing of course, chile.
“You see, as he got older, he started getting a little bit cranky and a little outspoken, what rednecks used to call “an uppity nigger” where I grew up. I guess all those years of being Black and pretending to be the one and only true Santa Claus must have softened up his brain a little. As he got older, Christmas by Christmas, he got meaner and that’s when all the trouble started. He just didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.
“He moved from city to city because no department store would keep him on for two seasons in a row: once was enough. He began moving northward until he finally reached the land of Canada. He would offer to play Santa Claus somewhere and the townspeople would take him up on his offer because they didn’t know what they wuz getting themselves into. He’d do good for a while but then he began to say nasty things he shouldn’t have been saying.
“Now that I think about it, chances are he was beginning to go crazy but nobody knew it. You know, like dementia or something. The last I heard of him he was in Canada somewhere up around Hudson Bay and still headed northward. Oh chile, you should have heard him when he was talking like he was clean out of his head! I heard him many times and I still remember a lot of what he said. He’d see some white ladies passing all dressed up and he’d start in on them:
‘Good morning, ladies, how are y’all today? My my, aren’t those some fine-lookin’ furs. I wonder just how many of them tiny mink animals do you think they had to kill to make your fine fur coat? I heard somewhere it was about 20 but as big and fat as you is, I bet it was 50!’
“I had to chuckle at that and how them ladies hurried off because he done insulted their feelings. And that was his good side when he used humor like that, not his mean side. When this Black Santa Claus I’m tellin’ you about really got wound up, then watch out!
“Here, let me read you something. I wrote him a letter once and he wrote back:
‘Dear Big Nose, it ain’t none of your damn business why I talk to myself or why I say mean things to passers-by. You see me doing my job and you see I can do it as well as anybody else; better, I reckon, because I’m the real true Santa Claus! That’s what drives me crazy and makes me mean-spirited. Everyone assumes because I was born with black skin that I couldn’t possibly be the real Santa Claus. That’s why I am so angry. I can pretend to be Santa Claus in a store but I can never be the real Santa Claus, right?
‘Why, these dumb jackasses know so little of their own planet. They’ve never been to my home at the North Pole but they think they can tell me what’s there! They’ve never seen me doing my work up there when I make toys for children! Who do you think was the very first person who stood at the North Pole? A Black man, just like me! And if that don’t answer your busy big nose, maybe this will: I ain’t saying mean things to nobody, I just am telling the truth.
‘What’s mean about the truth? That’s what Santa Claus is supposed to do, ain’t it? Who ever heard of a Santa Claus who tells children lies? You want me to say: “Yes child, I promise to bring you that new red sled on Christmas morning—ha ha, kid, I’m lying to you!” Or maybe you want me to say “As poor as you folks is you’ll be lucky to get anything in your sock—don’t even bother to hang one up!”
‘Them ladies in the mink fur coats were fat and I said they was! Where do you think they get mink coats from? They kill them beautiful little mink animals just so those lazy overstuffed big-ass hippopotamuses can come in here and slap down their money and buy things! That’s a disgrace and I said so. How is that crazy talk? Instead of you scolding me for talkin’ mean to them ladies you should be thankin’ me for talkin’ as kindly as I did ‘cause I could have said a whole lot worse. I didn’t say the half of what I was thinking!’
“Well chile, the letter goes on like that but that’s the better part of it . . . before this here Black Santa Claus starts in with some obscenities and profanities which your ears don’t need to hear. It got me to thinking, after I done growed up some more, that maybe he wasn’t so bananas after all but it just sort of looked that way. Of course a lot of us felt like that. I wasn’t the only one who secretly admired his honesty and laughed at his jokes.
“We remember his good years and how he was the best Santa Claus the children ever seen and that’s why they loved him but he didn’t make it easy for us because he started getting worse and ever meaner. I heard reports of him from time to time as he traveled and some of the things he said and done. And chile, that mouth of his just kept getting’ worse and worse!
“Now it’s time for you to go to bed. That’s the story of your daddy and why I married and divorced him and why he won’t be coming ‘round here no more. Tomorrow is Christmas Day and I want you to go to sleep and dream of what you may find in your sock tomorrow morning. Now you get along to bed and I’ll be in shortly to wish you nighty-night.”
“Good night, mom.”
“Good night, chile.”
