Yule Miss Me When I’m Gone

For those of us Christians who have children, there’s a sweet spot for Christmas memories. The sweet spot starts the day the kids are innocent enough to fall for the Santa Claus story, and ends the day they wise up—and give up—on Santa Claus. As my old buddy Big Steve once put it, “I gave up on Santa Claus and pajamas right about the same time. I was 6.” My own dear daughter Jess was born a little skeptical. I don’t know that she ever really believed that Santa Claus, magical or not, could find a way to fly a sleigh and millions of toys around the world on nothing but reindeer power. And even if he could, how could he sort out the swell presents for the good kids from the lumps of coal for the bad kids? Some years back, I asked Jess when she wised up to Santa Claus. “I was about 5 or 6,” she said. “Kindergarten or first grade.” “So why didn’t you tell us?” I asked. “You could’ve saved us from a lot of lying and scheming and present-hiding.” “Well,” she replied, “I was totally convinced that Mama still believed in Santa Claus, the way she decorated the house and put the nutcrackers on the mantel and left cookies out on the table. I didn’t want to wreck Christmas for Mama.” “How about me?” I asked. “I helped put up the tree.” “Heck Daddy,” she said. “I never thought you believed in Santa Claus. I figured my job on Christmas morning was to wait until I heard you and Mama downstairs, then come down and let y’all share my wonderment.” Best I can tell, clever parents can sell about four Santa Claus routines, to children ages 3, 4, 5 and 6. Before 3, the kids can’t reason. After 6, they’re done with Santa, and pajamas, and they’re done with pretending they believe that lame Christmas-eve segment on the local TV news where the weatherman says he’s tracking Santa on radar. Once the kids are 6, we parents aren’t putting anything over on the kids. They’re putting something over on us. I freely admit I was one of those manipulating children, playing Christmas like a rigged card game. By the time I was 6, I knew for sure that Santa Claus was my daddy, Jabo Jowers. I knew it because in those years from 3 and 6, I’d watched him start collecting catalogs in November, then spend his evenings thumbing through those catalogs and circling pictures of science toys, bicycles and pellet guns. I heard him telling my mother that he didn’t care what the stuff cost, he was going to get it for me, because all his daddy ever gave him was a damn billy goat. If playing Santa Claus meant Jabo would have to build house-sized liquor stills and chop stolen cars, he’d take those risks. So, between my sixth and 17th years, even though I never asked Jabo for anything, he bought me guitars, amplifiers, motorcycles and cars: Gibsons, Fenders, Harleys, a Corvette, a Cadillac. I know Jabo bought the guitars and amps because I saw him do it. Most likely, though, he stole the rest. I’m pretty sure the Corvette deal involved some swapped-out VIN numbers and bootleg license plates. By the time I was 13, I surely knew that Jabo shouldn’t have been pissing away all that money and effort on me. When I was 13, I was running the Jowers house. I ran the legit part of Jabo’s business. I typed his invoices, wrote his letters and kept his books. I told Jabo that if he came home drunk one more time, I’d lock him out of the house, and I did. I didn’t need him to buy me things. I made as much money playing a weekend gig as Jabo did building stills and chopping cars all week long. But at 13, I couldn’t just call my 40-something daddy in for a meeting and tell him to cut out the criminal activity and careless spending. That would have humiliated him and broken his heart. During the 17 years that Jabo and I shared the Jowers house, the one thing that made Jabo truly happy was making life better and easier for me, his late-comer, do-gooder boychild. Jabo spent the last third of his life proving to himself and everybody else that he’d do a lot better by me than his daddy did by him. No son of Jabo’s was going to end up with one sorry billy goat for a present. Jabo was happiest at Christmastime. He could pour on the presents, and the high-grade homemade whiskey, and outshine all the other daddies down in Horse Creek Valley, S.C. He could—and did—dance better than Elvis and sing better than Jerry Lee Lewis, at least when Jabo was sober and Jerry Lee was drunk. Jabo will always haunt my heart at Christmastime. I was with him for 17 years, but I only got to know him in a little four-year sweet spot, from age 14 through 17. This week I’ll surely miss him, and I’ll wish I could share his wonderment.