By Bob Copperstone
The Power of Positive Santas
While I lived in California some decades ago, I fell into a Christmas groove of donating to a police fund that delivered new toys to kids from needy families in Los Angeles County.
The Arcadia Police Department would ask the donors to help distribute the presents. I would love to have seen the happy kiddies receive my gifts.
During this one particular Christmas, though, I was working the editorial night shift at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and couldn’t go.
But when I told my new bride, Josephine, about the program, her eyes lit up and she eagerly snapped the sleigh reins out of my hands and took on the job with gusto.
Jo got on the phone and located a rental full-costumed Santa Claus to do the ho-ho-ho-ing, and even bought and wrapped more toys to add to Santa’s donated bagful.
That evening, while I was slaving over writing headlines and editing copy, Jo and Santa were in El Monte and La Puente traipsing from one wide-eyed child’s house to the next.
One of the kids even broke out crying. Jo said she and Santa couldn’t tell if those were tears of joy or terror.
The next morning, when I got home from the graveyard shift, Jo couldn’t wait to tell me all about it. Then she told me about one special Santa encounter.
She said one small little girl could only just stand there, mouth agape and looking up round-eyed at Santa as he pulled toys, one after another, out of his bag.
Jo said she and Santa could hear the tyke whispering, in a prayerful, faint voice, “I DO believe… I DO believe…”
Sweet as Homemade Cookies
Not too long ago, I got the sweetest Christmas present, and I don't even know who gave it to me. But it really made my Christmas.
One evening a bright-eyed, smiling young woman knocked on my door and asked, “Are you Bob?” I nodded, and she handed me a bulging, brightly colored Christmas bag.
I was kind of stunned, and of
course asked who it was from. She said only that my secret Santa asked her to give it to me, and she walked away, still smiling. I’m guessing she was a teacher, or a mother, or something.
Inside the bag were grooming articles – men’s body wash, men’s shampoo, hand wash soap, a tin of cookies, a sheet of 20 USPS Forever stamps, and a $20 gift certificate for Wahoo Super grocery store.
But the gift I cherish most, and still possess, was a letter, carefully penciled in block letters on a lined sheet of paper and adorned with hand-colored figures of mistletoe, Christmas stocking, reindeer, snowman and lollipops.
I’m assuming from the letter that my actual secret Santa was not the woman who delivered the presents, but was a little Irish girl, who wrote that she is very excited about Christmas, and that she obviously misses her family in Irland [Ireland], and has a “very green tree with a yellow angle [angel] on top” in her room.
“I am happy to get to wright [write] to you!” she wrote, “I hope you have a … Merry Christmas!”
I did, indeed, have a merry Christmas, thanks to my little Irish friend.
She asked in the letter if I have grandchildren. I don’t have any, but now I like to think I’ve got myself an adopted little grandsanta.
I hope her Christmas was as merry as she so richly deserves.
I’m sure the little darling wouldn’t mind that I paid her gifts forward by donating the stamps to the Saunders County Museum, and the gift certificate and grooming items to the local Food Pantry. The gifts certainly would have come in handy if I really needed them, as she must have thought that I might.
I kept the cookies, though. Ate ‘em all in one sitting. They were delicious, filling my stomach as nicely as the child’s letter filled my heart.
Life can be sweet as homemade cookies.
…(Burp!)
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