Live trees, Christmas stockings, and Feral Santa

Christmas is about making gifts and baking cookies. Christmas is opening presents only on December 25th proper, but feeling accomplished if we can drag it out to the next day. It is about rotating visits to the homes of relatives. It is holiday decorations up in late November and counting on a lot of snow on Christmas Eve. Christmas is two live trees in different rooms (for variation). Christmas is Holiday Inn and It’s a Wonderful Life. Christmas is extending Santa stockings past second grade into adulthood. Some large Thanksgiving-ish meal is always involved. Christmas is about making lists and crossing them off in malls and local bookstores. Christmas is about hints on gifts that force the recipient to guess the contents before opening. It is about watching each and every present get appreciated.

This was the Christmas of my youth. There were always slight variations, of course, reflecting the context of any given year. I have since married into some new traditions, such as a gift exchange party on Christmas Eve, and four times as many obligations to relatives. I am also in the process of co-creating brand new ones that the boys will carry on when they build new families of their own.

The latest addition—joining live Christmas trees that can be planted in January and the Magic Box, a form of Santa-attributed morning event in December that brings a holiday inspired present to the boys—is Feral Santa. FS is an adorable hand puppet of Santa Claus that showed up in the Magic Box and turned into a nighttime ritual of animal attacks and torn flesh. Happy Holidays.

I can’t take full credit for Feral Santa, thankfully. It was a co-created effort one morning a couple weeks ago.

Less than a week away from the end of the semester with several papers yet to complete, I had crashed on the couch for a couple hours respite from the computer. I awoke in the usual fashion—two energetic boys jumping on me asking for acknowledgment. This is typically a slow process that involves Archie alternating between asking to watch something on the big TV and demanding food. Those moments just after he wakes up have Carter at his best, so he is filled with patience for the rest of his family and willingly repeats his own requests until a response surfaces.

That particular morning, the Magic Box produced a small Santa Claus hand puppet. The boys shoved it in my face so it was the first thing I saw when my eyes opened. A bit startling. And I was a bit cranky. Under orders to do so, I calmly slipping Santa onto my hand, slowly turning the creature so his beady black plastic eyes faced their eager faces. Then, I pounced.

With growls and rabid snarling, Santa attempted to dismember my two boys by attacking hands, feet, tummies and noses. He would momentarily pause to glare, breathing in a quick, threatening manner. The boys were delighted:

Carter: Mom! Save us! It’s Santa. He’s feral. It’s Feral Santa!

Feral Santa rested just long enough to appreciate that my son knew what feral meant. But with each sudden, too-close motion by the boys, FS would leap into action again.

About five minutes was all the energy I could muster that morning. The day’s routine went on, as usual. But in the evening, Feral Santa was requested for an encore performance. Carter was particularly frenetic in the afternoon, so the promise of another episode of “When Santas Attack” was enough not only to get his wiggles out, but also brought complete and prompt compliance with the bedtime rituals of bathroom and books. When the same request came the next night, I knew Feral Santa was destined to become a holiday tradition, right up there with cheesy egg soufflé and white chocolate Lindt balls in my oversized stocking.

Since that first weekend, the boys have grown more bold. The game of Feral Santa has evolved into a quest to steal pillows. They have teamed up to attack the attacking elf in a self-sacrificial manner, allowing the partner to sneak up and take a prize back to their fortress. They are no longer feigning fear. It is war. Yuletide war. I re-aggravate my sprained thumb constantly, stopping the nightly game when my throat grows too sore from snarling. I assume the ritual will cease completely sometime after the Santa references become seasonally passe. But the moment this particular puppet finds its way back into the Magic Box next year, Feral Santa will live once more.

In the wrong hands, this puppet turns into a snarling monster.