Fayd vs. Santa Claus

(Please note: I'm kind of skipping way ahead here to present day. I thought this was worth writing about.)

When I was a kid, I absolutely believed in Santa Claus. I bought into all of the lore: Coming down the chimney (even though we never had one), reindeer on the rooftop, sneaking around in the middle of the night, filling our stockings and providing my brother and me with gifts that my parents swore they couldn't afford.

I remember some Christmas Eves in which it was difficult for me to even fall asleep. I was so excited about the prospect of being deemed a good little boy and being showered with presents as a reward. I recall one night in which I was laying down in my Aunt Cind's room and started hallucinating about the Three Kings. (And Mom and Dad wondered why I appeared to be so grouchy the first thing those mornings.)

That all changed after the Christmas in which I was 10 years old. I realized the truth about Santa. However, Loyd still believed, so I still kind of had to go along with it. But I wasn't going to lose any sleep over Santa again.

I remember a "Bad News...Good News" cartoon in Mad Magazine. In the first panel, it said, "Bad News is finding out there's no Santa Claus." The second panel said, "Good News is finding out it doesn't make a difference" and showing a boy under the Christmas tree with a lot of gifts. That's pretty much how it was for me and Loyd. We were still greeted with large presents on Christmas morning, regardless of whether we believed in Santa. The only bad thing was that when we were teenagers, Mom and Dad still insisted that we wake up early on Christmas morning, even though there were no other little kids in the house. I was REALLY grouchy then.

But one thing I did like about how Christmas was done by my parents was that Loyd and I were always aware of who was giving us gifts. We knew that only the special Christmas morning gifts and stockings stuffers were provided by Santa. All the other gifts were clearly labeled who they were for and who they were from. Santa was not going to be used as an excuse to avoid writing thank you notes.

So I frequently wondered how I would handle Christmas when I grew up and had kids. I certainly did not like my sleepless Christmas Eves of anxiety and wouldn't wish them on anyone else. After Boyd was born and we had experienced his first Christmas, I had a discussion with Myz. I told her I would prefer if Boyd didn't absolutely believe in Santa. I didn't know how we were going to get it to work, but I didn't want him to believe that Christmas was all about Santa. We never came to any real consensus about it, but we knew that we wouldn't have to worry about it for a couple of years.

That and the next two Christmases were spent with Marina's younger brother, his wife and their daughter Quyd (Boyd's cousin), who was five months older than Boyd (and experienced her first Christmas when she was a month old). Those holidays went off without incident and we didn't have to do anything special for Christmas morning. We just had to wake up, wait for other family members to arrive and then open presents.

But that all changed for Christmas 2016. Boyd was three years old and Quyd had just turned four. They had both watched enough TV in December to know that somebody was supposed to come down the chimney in the middle of the night and deliver presents. They were excitedly talking about Santa coming. I hadn't anticipated that they were going to understand this. I didn't know what we were going to do. We hadn't gotten them anything special. In addition, I was prepared to try to explain the Santa thing to one child, but I wasn't going to be able to do that with a child who wasn't mine. It looked like we were stuck.

On top of that, I had to hope that no one questioned how Santa was going to get out of the fireplace without breaking his neck:

Fortunately, Boyd fell asleep that night without any issue. Myz went out into the living room for a bit. I thought she was setting something up and waited for her to come back. When she did, I went into the living room. Imagine my surprise when I saw a cup of milk and a little bag of Oreo Minis there and NOTHING ELSE! I rushed back in the bedroom. Myz hadn't fallen asleep yet. "Hunny! There's nothing from Santa out there!" "Well, no, we don't have anything!" "We can't do that! The kids are expecting something!"

Myz and I went back out. We already had stockings sitting out with their names on them (along with other ones for the rest of the family). Fortunately, we had a couple of candy canes that we were going to give the kids the next day. We put those in their stockings and grabbed bananas and apples to fill the rest out. We didn't have any little toys or other gifts to put in, so it was all food items.

I also got out a piece of printer paper and quickly wrote a note from "Santa" to Boyd and Quyd, telling them they had been good and wishing them a Merry Christmas. I hoped they weren't expecting more.

As it turned out, I had a hard time falling asleep that night, worried about the reaction of the kids.

We were still in bed the next morning when we suddenly heard a SHRIEK from the living room. Boyd got up out of bed. I scrambled to grab my phone so I could take video and pictures.

Quyd was screaming, "He came! He came!" She held up the note and somehow, she seemed to be able to read what it said.

They were both excited about they had received. I was relieved. After this, I realized that all we needed to do was just fill their stockings. We would likely put other things like toys and other knick-knacks, but we weren't going to have to go overboard and set something special up each year. It looked like we had reached the perfect compromise between doing nothing and killing ourselves for the kids each year.

However, Myz decided to add a new twist for the next year. in 2017, Quyd and her family no longer lived with us, but we still planned to fill her stocking as they still lived in the same town and would be coming by to spend Christmas Day with us. I had shown Myz a YouTube video of parents who had left snowy footprints in their living room. I just thought it was funny. I didn't present it as a Christmas morning routine that we should co-opt. That year, Myz got a can of spray snow and put footprints on our carpet.

When Boyd woke up the next morning and saw the footprints, he said, "Somebody's going to have to clean that up!"

We did the footprints again the next year, but the spray snow can ran out. For 2020, I pretended that Santa couldn't leave snow footprints because of COVID-19 and left paper footprints instead. Boyd still seemed happy about it. We did the same for 2021, but I stopped doing that in 2022.

One year, Myz wanted to put a Nintendo Switch in the stocking. I didn't want to do that because it meant we were going to have to outdo that the next year. However, Myz couldn't get it to fit in the stocking, so it just became a gift from Mom and Dad. I was relieved.

A few years ago, I was discussing our Christmas routine with a co-worker. I mentioned that Santa only puts gifts in the stockings at our house. Her eyes widened, like she just realized that she didn't have to go crazy for Christmas all those years with her kids (who were already adults).

Boyd is now 11 and he's started to get a little cynical about Santa Claus. He says he'll continue to believe until he's 13, but I think the end is going to come a lot sooner than that.





And what's going to happen to the blog a this point? I don't know. Things are very complicated in my life that I don't have much time to myself to work on it.

At least I still do one post a year.

Fayd and the Christmas Day Playlist

One thing I love most about the holidays is listening to Christmas music. No matter how stressed out I get about deadlines this time of year, music never fails to remind me the meaning of the season and how much I enjoyed Christmas as a kid.

However, I notice there's an issue with A LOT of the songs you hear every year. Mainly, they're mostly inappropriate for Christmas Day.

This was something I first noticed on Christmas Day 1987. For whatever reason, the TV was on CMT and featured a performance by Crystal Gayle singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." I was aware that it was a performance that had been recorded prior to Christmas Day, but the thought occurred to me that it didn't make any sense to be singing this particular song today. After all, "Santa" came last night, so why are we singing about it today?

And then I realized that the vast majority of Christmas songs would not match this criteria for timeliness on Christmas Day. They basically lead up to a big climax on Christmas Eve. This includes the songs about Jesus and Santa. "O Holy Night?" Well, It's daytime now. What are we supposed to do? Wait around for Mary to breastfeed him? "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town?" Well, he came and went last night. Now, we have all these presents we don't know what to do with.

This is compounded by the fact we don't know what time Christ was born. (And really, we don't know what day.) But we seem to have this idea that he was born after midnight, so that's what we roll with. Just know that a lot of songwriters seem to find more inspiration from everything that takes place in the wee hours and not so much on December 25th, after everyone's done with their long winter's nap.

So what does this leave us with? Years ago, I had a blog post of "Fayd's Favorite Songs of the Season." The theme was that all the songs listed made no mention of Christmas, Jesus or Santa. All these songs would be appropriate.

I'm not going to supply an exhaustive list of songs appropriate for Christmas Day, but I will go with a few to give you an idea. Just know I can't think of many religious songs that would meet this criteria. Only "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" comes to mind.

Other non-religious songs include: "Deck the Halls"
"We Wish You a Merry Christmas"
"Feliz Navidad"
"Last Christmas"
"All I Want for Christmas is You"
"Do They Know It's Christmas"

Any songs about coming home for Christmas, like "2000 Miles" and "Please Come Home for Christmas." After all, if people make it home the day of Christmas, it still counts.

And there are actually a couple of songs about Santa that would be appropriate. "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" both reference events that took place the night before and are being relayed on Christmas Day.

Also, all the music from "The Nutcracker" would work, because that takes place on Christmas Day.

Wow, this is a really short list. I hope some songwriters are out there working on new material.

Fayd vs. The Star Wars Holiday Special

I was 12 years old when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. It was interesting because it marked the first time my parents had taken me and my brother to see a blockbuster film. They wouldn't take us to see "The Godfather" in 1972. They wouldn't take us to see "The Exorcist" in 1973. They wouldn't take us to see "The Godfather Part II" in 1974. They wouldn't take us to see "Jaws" in 1975 and they wouldn't take us to see "Rocky" in 1976. They wouldn't take us, even though we BEGGED to go. However, when they did go, there was usually a family film playing at the Cinema Twin in Roswell, so we were all able to go to the movies at the same time and didn't need a babysitter.

I became a big Star Wars fan right away and was later thrilled to hear that they were going to make a sequel. In the meantime, I first heard about "The Star Wars Holiday Special," but I didn't know it was supposed to have anything to do with the holidays. In the fall of 1978, I overheard two boys talking about it during the bus ride home. One of them asked the other if he knew about the upcoming "Star Wars" TV-movie. "Yeah, the one about Chewbacca and his family?" I was surprised that I didn't know anything about it. Years later, I would remember this was during the period of time in the 9th grade that I was doing poorly in school and Mom punished me (and my brother, who also wasn't doing well) by taking away the TV for several months. This was why I didn't get to watch it. The punishment was so severe that I couldn't even look at TV Guide.

In my head, I envisioned a TV-movie that was shot on film, similar to how the "Ewok Adventures" would look a few years later. I expected it to be a prequel solely focused on Chewbacca and his family, without Luke, Leia, Han, R2D2 or C3P0. I thought it would be serious in overall tone, like the first "Star Wars" movie. Another thing that I anticipated was that the TV-movie would be shown again about a year later after I got my grades back up and Mom's TV punishmnent was over. I would be certain to be on the watch for it, but it never did come back on again.

I put it out of my head for decades. After 1999, when "The Phantom Menace" came out and was being released on DVD, my friend Chud and I were discussing getting the DVD release. I told him I was going to wait for the full package with all six films. And I wanted EVERYTHING to be included, like the "Ewok Adventures" and the TV-movie about Chewbacca and his family.

It was at least another 10 years after that conversation that I came to learn what that TV-movie actually was. It was called "The Star Wars Holiday Special" and it was a variety show. And it was shot on videotape, not film. Also, while Chewbacca's family was the primary focus, it included all the other characters. And it was apparently the biggest freaking disaster in the history of Star Wars!

Looking back at Mom's punishment, I was very thankful for having TV taken away because it gave me a new perspective on life. I didn't need to watch TV every day. In fact, TV would have been detrimental to me in high school because I otherwise wouldn't have been involved in so many extracurricular activities. As bad as I thought high school was, it would have been even worse if I spent every night at home watching TV. And of course, not having to sit through "The Star Wars Holiday Special" was icing on the cake.

I still have not seen the entire special. I've watched the first 20 minutes. I've seen clips of the rest of the show and have watched all of the Boba Fett cartoon. I have a good idea of what my 14-year-old self would have thought of this, especially after expecting a serious TV-movie. A few months later (when I could watch TV again), I watched both episodes of "Legends of the Superheroes" (featuring live-action versions of the DC Superheroes). When the first episode started, I thought, "Oh, they're not going to take this seriously." I then altered my expectations so I could enjoy the program on a different level. I assume I would have done the same for "The Star Wars Holiday Special." I would have recognized it wasn't going to be a proper follow up to "Star Wars" and probably would have been entertained by it. By this point in my life, I had seen lots of cheesy stuff on TV and considered it the norm.

Of course, another issue was that no one talked about it at school, not even the two boys I had overheard discussing it in the first place. It was years later that I was reminded about what happened after the special had aired. The Guyana Tragedy took place. EVERYONE in school was talking about that. I felt so out of the loop because I hadn't been able to watch the news on TV. After that, Mom agreed to allow me to only watch the news on TV.

I guess the only thing I don't like about missing it was how clueless I was about the content for the next 35 years. I'm glad I didn't embarass myself by casually bringing up the TV-movie about Chewbacca and his family and getting a series of distorted looks from my geeky friends. Yes, there were things worse than missing "The Star Wars Holiday Special."

Long-Distance Christmas

I just realized I'm about to go a full calendar year without posting something on my blog. I have to apologize for this.

The nature of my job has been impacted by COVID-19. While I would usually take time during my lunch and breaks to write articles, I can barely get five minutes of peace without having to put out a figurative fire somewhere. I'm hoping things calm down next year. I have a few articles about ready to go, but I really want to build up a cache before I start blogging regularly again. I thought I would be well into Phase Two and Phase Three by now.

So, I thought I would at least do my annual Christmas post.

It's very interesting to see how things have changed over the last half-century with regards to the holidays. One of those has specifically to do with the long-distance calls to relatives and other people you weren't able to spend Christmas with in person. Does anyone remember how long-distance use to work? You had to call at specific times to get the best rates. If you called long-distance during a weekday, the cost was outrageous and you only did that in the event of emergencies. For whatever reason, someone decided it was a great idea to have the lowest rates between 11pm and 5am the next morning. And this was back in the day that if the phone rang and you were at home, you were obligated by law to answer it.

So on specific holidays, the overnight rates were in effect for most of the day. EVERYBODY in the country was trying to call their relatives. If you tried to call long-distance, you would get a recording that asked you to try your call again later. One Christmas, we were trying to call my uncle Ord for eight hours straight and we could not get through once! We did get to connect with him after 5pm, when the long-distance went back to the regular evening rate. While Grandma Bend was glad to finally get to talk to her son, she didn't like that she was going to have to pay the extra money for the long-distance call.

I couldn't help but wonder if the phone company didn't just shut down long-distance for the day and force everyone to use the evening rate if they wanted to call their loved ones so badly. It was bad for us because we only needed to make this ONE call. I can't imagine what it was like for those who had several people they needed to contact.

It is so hard to imagine that we used to live like this with our old technology. In at least the past 30 years, I haven't had any problems with trying to call people on Christmas. I can even make multiple calls and I never get any recording that tells me to try my call later.

People are always complaining how the cost of living does nothing but go up. This is the one thing that has actually gone down.

In this respect, I don't miss the old days.

Encountering an Asian Stereotype

You may have seen this clip from "Family Guy" before:



Prior to dating Myz, I was aware that this stereotype involving young Asian women existed, but I never thought I would actually encounter it. When I went to visit Mom in 2002, she gave me some water bottles to take on the drive home. They were 10 oz. bottles. I thought they were rather handy and didn't require a lot of extra effort to pick up, twist off the lid and drink while I was driving.

I continued to use these bottles when I made my trips up to San Jose to see Myz. I brought a couple of the bottles into the bedroom. Myz picked up one of the bottles and said, "Oh, my gosh! Look at this water bottle! It's so CUTE!" I explained that I had gotten it from Mom the last time I went to Phoenix. She kept going on and on about how small it was, like she'd never seen a water bottle like that before.

During that same visit, I went into the kitchen to fill a bottle from the water dispenser. All I had filled it, her cousin Haad grabbed the bottle out of my hand and said, "Oh, my gosh! Look at this water bottle! It's so CUTE!" I remarked that Myz had the same reaction, but I still didn't see it as anything special.

A few weeks later, I was going to leave directly from work to drive up to San Jose. I brought a few bottles into the breakroom so I could fill them from the water dispenser. All of a sudden, an Asian co-worker of mine named Xiz picked up one of the bottles and said, "Oh, my gosh! Look at these water bottles! They're so CUTE!"

I have since encountered other Asian stereotypes, but none so glaring as this.



And I guess I should go into a little detail about Xiz. She was a co-worker I had a crush on before I met Myz. She was of Chinese descent and was very pretty. She appeared to be a little flirtatious toward me, enough for me to think that maybe she was interested. But it seemed like she was that way with everyone.

She did have a couple of issues, though. She smoked and she had a kid. Another co-worker had met her daughter. He wasn't aware that Xiz lived in the same apartment complex as him. He saw the girl and thought she looked exactly like Xiz. He then asked the girl if her mother's name was Xiz. The girl said it was. He was shocked at the resemblance.

One day, I overheard her telling another co-worker in the breakroom that while she would date outside her race, she wouldn't marry outside her race. That pretty much told me I didn't have much of a chance.

Fayd vs. "A Christmas Carol"

One of the things I loved doing as a kid was watching all the animated Christmas specials on TV. If it was a cartoon and it was about the holidays, I couldn't be torn away from the TV. (I remember throwing a fit one year because Loyd and I wanted to watch "The Mouse on the Mayflower" on Thanksgiving, but all the men wanted to watch football on the only TV. We lost that one.) And it always lifted my heart to see the percussive "CBS Special Presentation" logo come on and lead directly into the soft piano intro of "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

When I was around 7 years old, I saw that something called "A Christmas Carol" was going to come on. This was the first time I'd ever heard of it. But "Christmas" was in the title and it seemed like it was going to have songs in it, so I watched. (I have confirmed it was the "Famous Classic Tales" version from 1970. You can find it on YouTube.)

I don't recall everything I was thinking while I was watching it. I must have been bewildered by the old guy griping about Christmas. Who doesn't like Christmas? And I was probably pretty freaked out by Marley's ghost and wondering why that was in a Christmas cartoon instead of a Halloween cartoon. (I had seen the "Famous Classic Tales" versions of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" earlier that year.)

I do know I was thinking that every time the ghosts removed Scrooge from his house that Santa wasn't going to come by. Maybe that was why Scrooge didn't like Christmas. He wasn't getting anything from Santa. I mean, it's one thing if you're at your grandmother's house. Santa knows to bring your presents there. But if you're just gallivanting through time and space, Santa's not going to even try to track you down.

So yeah, a lot of the story was really lost on me. However, I must have liked the cartoon because I know I watched it again the next year. But this time, I had a better understanding of what was going on. That one year made a difference in my perspective of the world.

I came to realize that not every Christmas cartoon needed to have Santa or Jesus in it.

The Reveal to Mom

In my relationship with Myz, I decided to hold off on telling my Mom about it for as long as possible. She always got WAY too excited anytime I was seeing someone. ("Grandchildren on the way!") I was actually glad she never met my previous girlfriend. I don't even remember telling her until after it ended the first time. And I don't even think I told her when we started things back up.

After I'd been seeing Myz for a few months, Mom told me there was someone she wanted me to meet. Her name was Rowd and she knew her from working in the New Mexico Legislature. She was around my age and was living with Mom and Dend in Phoenix until she could find a job and get on her feet. She thought she was someone I would like.

This forced my hand. I didn't tell her about Myz right away. I had to discuss this with Myz first. I had to let her know how my Mom got anytime I told her I had a girlfriend, about the expecations for getting married and having kids. I had to tell her about all the previous disappointments. (Myz knew about my ex-girlfriends. She just didn't know the extent of my Mom's involvment with them.)

We decided it was in everyone's best interests if I told Mom what was going on. This way, she wasn't getting Rowd's hopes up. One afternoon, I called her. She happened to be shopping with Rowd at the time. (Oh, great! I didn't want to do this while she was with her! Well, we've gotten this far. We need to get this over with.) I told her that I had started seeing someone. I said that her name was Myz and she lived in San Jose. "Is she Spanish?" "No." "Is she Black?" "No." "Is she White?" "No..." "THEN WHAT IS SHE?" "She Asian!" "Oh, okay."

I told Mom that her parents had come here from Vietnam. Mom said she hoped that she would get to meet her someday. I don't recall what else we discussed after that.

After getting off the phone with Mom, I called Dad and let him know. I never had a problem with telling him, but I figured it was best to keep him in the loop at the same time.

Not long after that, I had a few days off and went to Phoenix to see Mom and Dend. Rowd was still staying with them. I remember driving and getting there late at night. The first thing I had to do was call Myz and let her know I had gotten there safely. I had a cell phone at the time, but I was worried about roaming charges. (It turns out there really weren't roaming charges, but I didn't know how it all worked.) I had to use Mom's landline to call Myz and use a calling card to make the long distance call. I had to punch in all the numbers and the phone made a very loud beep every time I hit a key. I was afraid I was going to wake up the entire house just by punching in my card number. And then, I didn't so something right the first time, so I had to make those beeping noises ALL OVER AGAIN!

After talking to Myz, I went to sleep in the guest room. I woke up the next morning and saw Mom and Dend. Later, Rowd got out of bed. Usually, when Mom had tried to set me up with someone, she would be like a younger version of Mom, with blond hair and blue eyes. I could tell that Rowd was Native American. I thought that at least Mom was trying to fix me up with someone closer to my taste.

Rowd talked about how all the beeping from the phone woke her up. Mom and Dend hadn't heard anything.

Rowd was nice and very smart, but I knew I wouldn't have started something up with her even if I didn't have Myz in my life. This was because Mom was involved. Now, if I'd met Rowd on my own without Mom's involvement, there was a possibility. But I didn't put much thought into this.

Later, Mom told me that Rowd had divorced her ex-husband after she had been arrested for beating him up. I guess Mom thought that after my other disastrous ex-girlfriends, Rowd would have been a cakewalk.

This provided justification for me knowing that I could never allow Mom to pick my girlfriends. And thankfully, she never got that opportunity again.