It was a wonderful Christmas Eve, from the hustle and bustle of last minute shopping, to delicious dinner at our house with Kathy’s family, to two meaningful church services at Holy Communion, complete with great music, to getting the snow blower started after a whole day of failure.
But I think it’s safe to say that the single most precious and memorable moment came right after dinner, courtesy of Kathy’s dad and a not-so-little favor he did for my brother Steve and his partner Scott. Because of the bad weather they’ve been having in Seattle, Steve and Scott decided that they weren’t going to be able to get to the Space Needle for the annual Christmas Extravaganza there, which includes a chance to visit with Santa Claus himself. As fervently as Henry believes in Jesus, my seven-year-old nephew believes every bit as fervently in Santa Claus, and their inability to get to the Space Needle to see Santa was likely to be a soul-crushing disappointment for Henry. So Steve and Scott came up with something of a consolation prize- arranging for Santa to call Henry to get his gift wishes that way. And when they told Henry about that, his eyes lit up as brightly as ten of Rudolph’s noses.
But then the question arose of who to secure to be the Phon-a-thon Santa? They considered several possible options, including me – (which would have worked okay even if I’m not the Ho Ho Ho type, because there’s no way Henry would have recognized my voice over the phone) but as soon as Steve asked me, I thought of someone else would be ten times more believable than I could ever be – Kathy’s dad. He’s actually never had the chance to play Santa Claus in person, but he would be fantastic at it – and my wife and I both knew that he would carry this off this little assignment perfectly.
It’s funny how much this felt like a moment from an episode of Mission:Impossible. We chatted with Steve right beforehand to get the specifics out of the way – the most important being that Santa needed to say something to Henry about how sad he was that he hadn’t got to see him at the Space Needle. Other than that, it just needed to be your basic “have you been good this year” sort of chat – and Bob was ready to go.
Interestingly, when I called Seattle back, I expected Steve to answer as he had before – but apparently they were thinking that the next call would be Santa himself calling, so they had Henry himself answer. And as soon as I heard Henry say “hello” the thought crossed my mind that I should pretend to be some sort of North Pole switch board operator and maybe say something like “North Pole calling. Please hold for Santa Claus” – but I decided that this might be beyond my limited theatrical skills, so I just handed the phone to Bob while whispering to him “it’s Henry.” So Bob took the phone from me, and in the most rotund voice he could muster, he said “Merry Christmas, Henry. Guess who this is!” And from there, the two of them had a lovely chat- complete with questions like “have you been good?” and “what fun things did you do this year?” and “have you been helping your folks?” (He remembered just in the nick of time not to make any references to Henry’s mom and dad.) And after maybe two minutes, Santa said he had to go because he had a lot of other children to call – and rang off with a couple of Ho Ho Ho’s that nearly had me believing that it was St. Nick himself on our sofa.
Steve called back a couple of minutes later to thank Bob – and to say that when Henry hung up, he turned to his dad and papa and said “that was Santa Claus!” And when Steve asked, “do you mean that was one of Santa’s helpers” Henry replied “no, it was Santa Claus himself!” So it was a fully convincing phone call – and much more so than it would have been with me. (And by the way, we made sure that Grandpa Gall was in our living room and that Lorelai was in our family room, well out of earshot and thoroughly occupied by something else, so there was no chance that she would overhear this conversation and have her own belief in Santa complicated.) And as Kathy and I hovered in the background, overhearing at least one half of the conversation, we found ourselves deeply thankful to be part of two families overflowing with such love.
pictured above: Bob on our living room sofa, on the phone with Henry. I love how the little snowman figure in the background appears to be listening in – and the wide smile would seem to indicate his great pleasure with how it was going.