I am one of those few unfortunates who never believed in Santa Claus, so it was with some trepidation that I approached a book that dealt with the big red guy. I'm not opposed to SC, and my kids will be allowed to believe in him, but my parents didn't go that route with me (they were taught in some parenting class that when your children found out he wasn't real they would never trust you again and discipline would fall apart -- and I was their first child).

Tom Plummer's book has a rather interesting set up. He tells some story from either his childhood as a believer in Santa Claus, or from his adult life as a man who loves to dress up as Santa and crash Christmas parties or visit the neighbors on the big gift giving day. Between each chapter is an "adult" letter to Santa Claus that generally deals with some adult person who has a problem and asks Santa for a solution.

The stories were often touching, often funny and generally sentimental. Whether one likes them or not depends on his or her reading tastes. If you like sentimental and sometimes sappy stories, it's great. He acknowledges reality often enough to keep it from being overwhelming for those who prefer sentimentality grounded at least somewhat in reality (such as the story about how his never-broken-a-rule son suddenly goes hog wild and begins using their cars without asking because he'll be off at college soon and so no punishment would last long enough). If you want cold, hard, ugly reality, then the letters portion may satisfy you.

My wife thought perhaps the letters were real, but after analyzing them, I decided that Tom had written them, since they all had the same basic sentence structure and followed the same pattern:

Dear Santa,
     I'm an adult. I have a problem (wants to put off more kids until out of school, has cancer, wants a long lost book, is divorced, etc.). I have fond memories of you as a kid. Here are more details about my problem. Can you/will you/please don't help?
     Jim(or some name obviously male or female), age (from 18-99)

These letters are tacit acknowledgments that the adult world is not as simple as the world of a child, and that adult wants are more serious. Yet the hope of Santa still carries on. Actually, the letters bothered me the most. Some were funny (over trivial wants) and others downright depressing (I have gone deaf recently). It's a good acknowledgment of the adult world. But are the letters a dose of reality to his "Santa is the cure for all the world's ills" mentality he seems to have in the stories he tells? The letters are sometimes difficult to read because many of them could happen to any of us (losing the use of any one of our senses due to old age or getting cancer) and the adults in the letters often sound on the brink of despair (or even suicide in one case although that word is not used, merely implied). Since the book comes from a viewpoint "we know Santa is not real, what he represents is important" it doesn't seem likely Santa is going to be able to help these poor suffering adults,a nd a childish sense of wonder is not present in many of the letters. To me, these letters actually sabotaged his more simple narratives about the wonders of being a child and believing in Santa.

I did slightly misrepresent him above. He does not say "Santa is the cure for all our ills." He uses Santa as a representative for our lost sense of wonder that we had as children. What he's advocating is not a return to Santa as much as a return to our inner child, more or less. And while I found his world view simplistic in any of the stories, and the letters depressing, after reading the book I couldn't help but wish that I had grown up believing in Santa Claus. ###

%L B199958 %O 08 December 1999 %Z Harlow S. Clark %@ harlowclark@juno.com %A Michael J. Rosen %J Picture book %T Elijah's Angel: A Story for Chanukah and Christmas %R Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson %I Harcourt, Brace %D 1992 %G 0-15-201558-2 %P 32 %$ 6.00

Sunday December 5, 1999 (and Wednesday, December 8)

According to the free Wheaties calendar on the fridge, this is the 2nd night of Chanukah. I have just read Michael J. Rosen's picture book Elijah's Angel: A Story for Chanukah and Christmas, Illustrated by Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson (Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1992), and am listening to Clayne Robison sing Orson Hyde's prayer dedicating the Holy Land for the return of the Jews.

Rosen tells about a barber, woodcarver, and lay minister named Elijah Pierce who had a shop just down the street from him growing up. He tells it as if he were 10 years old looking back a year to when Christmas Eve shared nights with the first night of Chanukah. He tells how he would like to "buy one of Elijah's animals," but that though his parents have a piece Elijah did in their kitchen they wouldn't want to buy pieces like "God and the Angels" or "The Infant Jesus," which to Jews would be graven images.

Elijah complicates matters by giving 9-year-old Michael a guardian angel. "You know, I send prayers to all the wood I've ever carved; now you'll always be in my prayers." Michael is afraid his parents will see the angel as a graven image, and hides it from them for a bit. When he finally shows them the angel they tell him, "What this angel means to you doesn't have to be what it means to Elijah," that he can accept the angel as a sign of Elijah's love and care, his friendship, without adopting the religious connotations of the angel.

In reciprocal friendship Michael and his parents take the painted-spool menorah he has made in Hebrew school over to the barbershop the next morning, closed for Christmas, of course, and leave it inside the storm door with a note. Elijah puts it in his window and adds a new candle to the menorah each night of Chanukah.

I love this book not only for its act of friendship, but for its statement of shared heritage, shared humanity. There is a haunting passage where Michael is contemplating a two-part picture called "Slavery Days," which he knows his parents would not buy because "it makes them too sad -- no, much worse than sad. . . . In one half of "Slavery Days" black men are hiding in the secret rooms of a mansion on the Underground Railroad while white people are upstairs eating a big dinner. In the second half, other white people are standing around a tall tree where black men hang from nooses."

I also love Aminah Robinson's paintings. She too spent many childhood hours in Elijah's barbershop, and probably learned some of her art from him. She has chosen a folk art style and a folk art medium -- "house paint on scrap rag" -- to capture the spirit of Elijah's carvings. Her drawings of hands convey the power and wonder and ministry in a hand. The picture where Elijah cuts a man's hair while a class of schoolchildren looks on shows the haircut as a laying on of hands, and when Michael's parents re-interpret Elijah's gift for him, they have the same kind of hands Elijah does, they are ministering as he does.

I don't know if this book is still in print. I hope so. If not, go to your library and check out a reason to celebrate.

Harlow S. Clark