Gather 'round, kids, it's Christmas Story Time

[Beleth]

PROLOGUE
This is a transcript of a speech I gave at Toastmasters last year. It won me first prize in my club's Humorous Speech competition, and second prize at the area level. It's topical for this time of year, and best of all, it's all true. Really.

So, without further ado --


MY WEEK WITH THE LEGEND

Before I start, let me ask you: Do you believe in Bigfoot?


Me neither.

I’m a skeptic at heart. I hear fantastic stories about wondrous things, but unless I actually see them myself, I tend not to believe them. All through my life I’ve heard stories about Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster, and the Tooth Fairy, but since I’ve never seen them, I tend not to believe in them.

But there’s one such legend that I do believe in. I believe in him wholeheartedly. That’s because I did see him. I did more than see him, in fact. I once spent an entire week…

… with Santa Claus.

It’s true. I was four..., and my parents and I were vacationing at a little lakeside cabin in the middle of Wisconsin. There were a number of these little log cabins dotting the edge of the lake, and staying in the cabin three doors down from us was Santa Claus.

Let me tell what he looked like.
Of course he had long white hair and a long white beard.
But he was immense too.
He must have been seven foot thirty.
He weighed close to eight thousand pounds.

Now I know what you’re saying to yourself.
You’re saying “Beleth, that could have been anyone.
How do you know it was Santa Claus?”

Easy. I asked him.

I asked him, “Are you Santa Claus?” And he looked down at me, chuckled, and said, “Yeah. Sure, kid.”
Well, that was good enough for me!

I learned a lot about Santa Claus that week. I mean, I already knew a lot about what he’s like around Christmas time, but not what he’s like the rest of the year. Here are some things I found out about Santa that are not common knowledge. When he’s not riding around on his sleigh, Santa likes to ride around on his Harley.
He has a big, black Harley with an eagle painted on the side of the gas tank.

Santa Claus really, really, really likes beer. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw Santa without a beer in his hand.

It was hot that summer, and when it’s hot, Santa likes to go around shirtless. It was because of this that I found out that Santa has numerous tattoos.
If his tattoos are any indication, his favorite things in the world are his motorcycle, the Grateful Dead, and Korea.

One of Santa’s friends had a speedboat. Every so often they would go waterskiing. I should say that they tried to go waterskiing.
There are some things a four-year-old should never have to see. One of them is Santa Claus being dragged face-first across the surface of a lake.

There are three Mrs. Clauses! That surprised me. I think it surprised the third one too. When I told her, “Hey, you don’t look like the other two Mrs. Clauses,” she got all upset.
After she left, Santa and I had a little chat.

He gives strange presents when it’s not Christmastime. One day when the police drove down to visit him, Santa called me over to his back yard, shoved a bag down my shirt, and said “Here, kid, Merry Christmas, now get lost.” I went back to my cabin and looked at the bag. It was a baggie full of chopped-up weeds. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I put it in my suitcase. Later I saw the policemen give Santa a ride in their car!
I was so jealous.
Now that I think about it… that was the last time I saw Santa.
This meeting with Santa Claus was one of the high points of my childhood and changed my life in a lot of ways. For starters, the only time I ever got spanked was right after my mom unpacked my suitcase.

And it caused me to be very skittish around Christmastime. My parents and I would do the traditional thing and go to a department store and visit Santa. But the Santa that was there always scared me.
Because I knew…
I knew that that wasn’t the real Santa.

I have my own four-year-old now, and some day we are going to have The Talk.
I mean The Talk About Santa.
And I’m going to tell him, “You know the Tooth Fairy? That’s your mom.
The Easter Bunny? That’s your grandparents hiding eggs the night before.

But Santa Claus?

Let me tell you about Santa Claus."

[supercorgi]

Beleth! That's hilarious - thanks for sharing that. :D

[Halden]

Well here is my Christmas story:

“Make sure to tie down the gifts” a sentence I have head more than enough times during the Christmas season. In 2003, as we were preparing for our annual pilgrimage back to North Bay for Christmas, we experienced one of the more memorable Christmas’ ever.

My Father was gracious enough to drive up to Ottawa to assist with the trip as we were quite tight in our 1999 Neon as there was Terri and I, Mojo, our two dogs, all our gifts, luggage and Mojo's stroller. On December 23rd Terri and my Dad packed our car and his truck and were eagerly awaiting my call to say my work day was done and we were heading out. At approximately 3pm I called my dad and told him I was ready to go and he headed out to get me while Terri went to her cousin Marlen's to say some good byes and we would meet there. Well the snow was falling and the drive to pick me up took longer than anticipated, we then had to drive to Mathieu’s (My dad was giving my cousin a ride home) and meet Terri. Everything was going well, we got to Mathieu’s and all piled back in to go get Terri and Mojo. This is were the fun begins.

Somewhere between Mathieu’s and Marlene’s our large Rubber Maid tote full of Christmas gifts fell out of the back of the truck. Now this would not have been so bad had we noticed when it happened but we didn’t notice until we got to Marlene’s. The Total distance from Matt’s to Marlene’s is probably only about 10Kms but in rush hour and going right through downtown it could take forever to search and find the gifts.

I had a melt down on the couch, my dad felt terrible, Terri talked it over with Marlene and Mathieu started calling every radio station to have them announce that we had lost the gifts and if they were found who they could call. I got in the car and carefully retraced our steps but to no avail. As I walked back into the house dejected I was greeted with a warm meal and some sympathetic shoulders to cry on.

We resigned ourselves to the hands of fate and the kindness of strangers as we headed west gift less and a little sad. The ride to North Bay was quiet and uneventful and we arrived unscathed. We had a fairly restless but well needed sleep and arose the next morning to many enquiries from friends and relatives as news of the previous nights events circulated. We put on a brave face and went about our normal holiday festivities. Our running joke was that we had gotten everyone new cars but that the keys were in the box we lost and were irreplaceable. My Father in a magnificent gesture went out and replaced the one gift that really meant a lot to me. I had gotten Mojo a little statuette of a father and son for his first Christmas and my father hunted down another just like it and wrapped it up for Christmas morning.

Exhausted from the merriment and cheer we collapsed on the night of Christmas 2003. We were awoken on Boxing day by loud screeches and screams from my mother as she dragged us from bed to take a phone call. On the phone was Marlene, someone had found the box and returned it to the local Newspaper. The paper had run a story about the box of gifts found who the gifts were addressed to and if you had any information to call. Terri called the newspaper and arranged to have Marlene pick it up, Marlene and her family were going to be passing through North Bay that evening and would drop off all our gifts. This was an amazing act of kindness; I mean really how many people would find a box full of presents and try to find it’s rightful owner? Turns out the women that found it thought there maybe a body inside or something equally as sinister and never even opened it.

Our answering machine was flooded with calls from friends who had seen the article and the paper wanted to do a follow up piece. So my son, not even 6 months old, was going to be in the paper for a 2nd time. The second article recapped our trials and tribulations and allowed the city to put a face to the idiots that lost all their gifts.

Now that we had all the gifts we had another Christmas for everyone but had to come clean that we hadn’t gotten them cars. So this is the end of my Christmas tale, all turned out well and I tell you we will always firmly secure our presents from now on.