They call me crazy: I guess it’s in my right. I’d say I parallel Plath and Dickinson in their poetic plight. It’s a part of life. It’s something I’ve always known. And this holiday season shows how my disdain has grown for lies; I even hate the Christmas lights. I’m a Grinch-like *****. I won’t pretend to love consumerism, plastered-smiles of family—I lose my sanity every night there’s a holiday party. I sneak multiple glasses of wine. I text my lovers while my parents laugh at boring stories my relatives share. I am the coal of children’s stockings. I am the hair in the drain of the virtuous people showering off Christmas cocktails.
I was raised to be scared. I was raised to believe magic. It was so ******* tragic when I found out Santa was a lie. I held him in such high regard, the accord that I’d get some kind of reward if I was always nice. These terms included rejecting all vice and feeling faith in the stillness that even mice couldn’t be heard. I wouldn’t ever share a word of any sadness or doubt and this shutting of my mouth would promise prizes. Santa was my savior, my lord. I had a hard time adjusting to the fact that he was a fraud, but even worse—my parents were. My mother was a Mary. I couldn’t see her having *** as a means to create me. She was the wholesome, proper etiquette of French perspective and Muslim heritage. Santa was a separate thing. Santa was my father’s way, his mechanisms and faults that taught us to be loyal kids. I prayed., I prayed. I prayed to a mystical man who’d promise me goodness and accept me for myself, only if I followed his guidelines. I could be rewarded later, later, and my dreams on Christmas Eve of this anticipation would keep me awake and wondering: “sleep, sleep” they said, so I’d lay my head on my pillow and think of marshmallows and wrappings and peppermint and cookies and milk. “Santa will love my favors,” I thought. “Just be a nice girl and he’ll provide all you want in exchange for your virtue and goodness. Toys and family are all you need to be happy.” I accepted this notion, along with wine and bread and didn’t question the thoughts in my head that asked for a better understanding.
I prayed. “Dear Santa, I want a pony,” all the little girls said. Who would know in reality how much I’d dread cleaning up **** and taking care of it like a child or sacred possession? I wanted something to ride, to love. “Don’t question Santa—he lives above in the North Pole. If you asked him he’s bring a whole bag of presents. His presence will bless you if you stay a good girl and twirl in nice dresses and count all your blessings.” I wondered about all children in the world. “Well how can he fly all around the world at night and serve everyone? How does Santa know who deserves any one certain present?” “It’s not a competition—just be a good girl and don’t worry your little head about the mechanics of Santa’s magic: get good grades in school and listen to the authoritative teacher who expects you to learns but scolds you for asking questions. Listen, but don’t be heard. Believe our word that Santa’s coming to make your life better. Just be a good girl.”
I remember stacking cookies on a plate and leaving milk. The last time I might’ve been nine and I felt such guilt for not having them fresh-baked but leaving Chips-Ahoy! I went to bed but my brother’s ploy to catch Santa in the act—to prove for a fact that he existed—persisted beyond my parents answers and later went to destroy my fantasies of merriment. They call me crazy, but I’m not the one who lies. I found out later that Santa was a disguise. From sitting on the lap of every man who wore a hat and went to pat my thigh after asking for a bicycle, I learned Christmas was a cruel cycle of lies. I thought beyond it and wondered why my parents would deny the fiction they instilled. Did God advocate this kind of ignorance towards a child? Three years before I found out about Santa I learned about life and knew about death and realized one day my parents would die. I cried every night. I wondered when it would happen and the thought that no particular circumstance could rob their life made me anxious inside.
“What’s beyond life?” I’d wonder, in my little girl way, and my parents would reassure me to chase those thoughts away with Barbies and rainbows and sunshine. “Everyone has their time. There’s very little chance I’ll die tomorrow.” Tomorrow would pass and they’d still be alive but I’d ask about the day after and they’d chide me without providing answers. “How did Mary give birth?” asked the thirteen-year old me. I knew enough about biology to wonder how Santa and Jesus combined to make “merry”—a holiday of lies.
Adults despised my young eager mind and talked about a bible, a fairy-tale of St. Nicolas who once did this thing where he delivered socks to houses. I was wrong for my investigations and grown-ups had no hesitations in telling me so. “I don’t know,” they’d say, but just have faith and all will be okay. I knew about the Santa hoax so I figured Allah and God were also a joke I was too young to understand. Christian neighbors would reprimand my efforts and tell me about hell—saying they would show me the way and take me away if I went to church with them on Sundays. They were so nice and so threatening. “(Your Muslim friend is crazy but we can sway her back to normalcy). Would you like to try some bacon?”
Maybe I was crazy. I fetishized naught and nice later in life and I preferred the role of naughty. I thought if someone taught me a lesson I could get some answers in exchange for being bad. All I came up with was touching in the private parts with a warning “keep your mouth shut unless you want to be put up for adoption.” My mother was away. “Be grateful for your step-dad—that dead-beat Franklin isn’t the one filling your stockings.” I couldn’t endure talking because my silence was the exchange for “stuff”. Merry Christmas indeed—when mom was away we celebrate with shots of peppermint schnapps. “Do you remember those days?” I’d ask my siblings. “No-but I don’t really want to.” I wanted to ask “Does it haunt you in the same way?”
Mother was away. My siblings were estranged. I had no one to talk to so I used my own gift to make new friends. “Cute,” they’d call me, right as I was hitting puberty. “I thought you were older—when’s your birthday?” “Several weeks before the holiday,” I’d say. I’d find a boy with a nice sitting-lap and I’d talk about all the crap I couldn’t share otherwise. They’d sometimes stroke my thighs while they pretended to listen. I’d look in their eyes and see irises glisten but I didn’t know what I thought was trust was the human condition—a sin called lust. I wanted someone nice to provide me with goodness, but in my heart I knew that naughtiness earned the ultimate prize. I grew to despise the accustomed way men would lie and top of me and sweat out their secrets while robbing my thighs. I went with it anyway. You deal with this kind of celebration during the holiday and you don’t think twice about the lies—just do your best to be nice. I was nice in so many ways. They called me crazy.
