The Santa of 2020

This year has become all about silver linings….because quite frankly, it’s been the hardest year most of us have ever lived through.  The deaths, the illnesses, the disappointed looks of our kids as they realized their birthdays and holidays had to be “different” (read: family only) this year. Then there's the stress of keeping a small business afloat, coupled with other friends’ unemployment.  It has been unremitting.
 
Hence the silver linings: appreciating what we still have, while we still have it. 
 
Like that short window of childhood when the Magic of Christmas is palpable, and, if lucky, the bonus window of getting to relive it years later through your own kids, nieces/nephews or grandkids. 
 
With that in mind, I search to see if there are any COVID-safe options for our 4, 8 and 10 year old kids to see Santa Claus this year.  
 
Turns out, there’s a place where Santa sits behind a plexiglass screen, while also sporting a face shield. Temperature readings and masks are required. Knowing that visiting Santa on Zoom will be a bust, I make a reservation.
 
On the appointed day at the appointed time, to get into the store housing Santa, we must stand in a long line. Of all men. Even more odd, many of these guys have masks around their chins as they puff on cigarettes. 
 
Coming from LA, we don’t smoke in public, unless of course, the smoke is of that blissfully sweeter variety found at concerts. Cigarette smoke????  Ugh. This harsh second-hand smog has our 10 year old coughing and coughing through her mask. 
 
Her coughing is interrupted by the squealing of our 8-year old,  as she points in disgust to about 10 roach carcasses filling the small round patio lights in the ceiling. Where are we?
 
Once finally inside, we are greeted by taxidermy deer as they creepily graze throughout the store. A few stuffed bears stare down at us, their glass-eyes vacantly staring through us from their mounts on the ceiling.
 
Oh Sunny Saint Nicholas: We have come to see Santa in a gun store.
 
Our 4 year old doesn’t move; he himself having become petrified. 
 
We physically steer him to the back of the store, following “Santa This Way” signs, walking through a sea of camouflage: hats, sweaters, boots, pants, backpacks, shell belts.
 
We finally stumble upon a shack labeled “Santa’s Work Shop”, outside of which is a faux wooden porch, on which a very sleepy Santa methodically rocks in a large rocking chair: back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.
 
My 8 year old, an ardent Santa believer, turns to me and says, “Mom – he is NOT the REAL Santa.” She doesn't miss a thing, that one.
 
Three sloppily dressed elves pounce on us. This “North Pole” shack is deserted of other people, most sane and local parents recognizing that a weapon store is not the jolliest or most appropriate of places in which to see Santa.
 
“Do you have a reservation?” a masked and bespectacled elf asks. I look around at the deserted area. “Does it matter?” I ask. 
 
Affronted, the elf straightens up to his full stature (waay too tall to be an elf), and my husband quickly gives him our name and reservation time.
 
“AH! Yes! Here you are. Rosens. For Santa.” He speaks as if we are in a sea of humanity, hoping to get us in.  “Right this way.”

There's no where to really go, so he points and we turn to see Elf #2.
 
Elf #2 suddenly wields a digital thermometer like a drunk orchestra conductor. Elf #2, just for the record, is a woman who should never ever be in spandex pants under any condition or in any public arena. Not for any holiday. Not even in the Ozarks of the North Pole.  She finally aims and settles the thermometer on our four-year old’s…..wrist. 
 
After all wrist temperatures are satisfactorily recorded (wrist temp taking apparently the rage in the backwoods of the Arctic), my children just stand there.  Our girls are thinking "Can we just go??!" but are too polite to say anything. Our five-year old is still petrified - not thinking at all.
 
The Man in Red sits quietly, rocking in his chair on his porch behind plexiglass. He makes no effort to greet them. 

Elf #2 leads our son towards the plexiglass, causing his sisters to quickly surround him with protective gestures.
 
As my children encroach on the other side of his plexiglass, the Man in Red warily eyes them through his face shield.  
 
Then an emotion registers on his face, not of joy or of interest in my children. No, it is clearly forlornness, a look that says, “Hot damn what I wouldn’t give to be out in Nature right now with them guys, nursin’ a wad of chaw, in our camo, totin’ our rifles, instead of with this lot of ....masked kids!"
 
(Scenarios play in my mind as to how he ended up on this porch: he drew the short stick? Couldn’t hold his moonshine?) 
 
My children tentatively perch on the edge of the bright green riser, the Grumpy Santa still silently watching them as he rocks on his porch.
 
To complete the picture, a Taxidermy Reindeer with magnificent antlers witnesses the scene just to Santa’s right. Was this Comet? Cupid? Santa’s reindeer are supposed to live forever, unless apparently they encounter Grumpy Santa with his gun on the wrong day.
 
This scenario is a perfect metaphor for 2020.
 
Elf #3 hides behind a desk with a camera.  “Look over here!” he yells at my traumatized kids. Except, it turns out, the two who follow his  directions to look "here", means they are looking slightly above and away from the lens. 
 
Two things are abundantly clear: 

1. We’re not in LA anymore
2. 2020 is one for the books. 

 
Here’s to you, 2020.