I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas - Lewis Black [32]
Then I had to.
Fast-forward several years. Once again I found myself putting on the fake fat for a holiday special I hosted for the History Channel called Surviving the Holidays with Lewis Black. I was to play an actual Santa at a New York store. Now there were real kids—wide-eyed, sad-eyed, cross-eyed, snot-ridden, full of wonder, full of fear, full of life. Real live kids.
Sitting there in Santa’s chair, all dressed up like Old Saint Nick himself, you look down into the eyes of these kids, who are staring at you as if you really are who you’re pretending to be. You start to realize that there’s something eerie about the whole experience, being awash in all of that innocence, that hope. Especially when you’re the one who has never bought into any of this happy claptrap. It was a real test of my acting ability, and I didn’t think I was up to it. After all, I’m not Mr. Warm and Fuzzy. I find it exhausting. And you can’t fool kids.
It’s bizarre at best to be a middle-aged Jew dressed up as Santa Claus whose job it is to ask a kid what he wants for Christmas, knowing full well you can’t deliver the goods. I pretty much felt like the head of FEMA during the Katrina crisis. So here I was, potentially setting these youngsters up for a bitter disappointment. As their little feet scuttle down the stairs on Christmas morn, only to find that the kitten, the favorite doll of the year, the year’s greatest new toy, or the miniature pony that they asked for and you said would be delivered isn’t there.
You created expectations that wouldn’t be fulfilled, and were never going to be by the likes of you. You might as well have taken a shit under the tree for all the goodwill you created.
You destroyed their Christmas.
Or maybe you should look at it in a more positive light. Maybe, you conclude, you’ve prepared those children for what truly lies ahead for them: disappointment and despair. Learning that at an early age will leave them better prepared for real life than that happy kid who got the new virtual-reality hoohah that everyone wants but is so tough to find. But he got it. That hardly ever happens. Stores run out of it. Just like doctors will someday when they hand out, say, the cancer vaccine. By the time they get to you, “Sorry, we ran out.” Bastards.
After playing Santa twice, I can’t figure out who enjoys being Santa. In the end, you’re just a big, fat, compulsive liar. You’re no savior; you’re just leading a child to his first disappointment, the first of many. Soon the child’s eyes are opened and he’s screaming at his parents: “Santa’s not real? Are you shitting me? Who ate the cookies and milk all those years? You, Dad? Why, you son of a bitch!”
Though I’ve never experienced this happy moment of revelation, even I know it’s got to be tougher than losing one’s virginity. This is the moment when the trust and the faith that you had in your parents—your guardians and protectors—can’t be relied on anymore. What else have they been lying to me about? Are they even my parents? Maybe I’ll fall asleep one night and wake up the next morning in a ditch by the side of the road. There’ll be a note from them that says: “Don’t worry. Santa will come pick you up in a minute, unless you were sleeping when he arrived to get you. Santa doesn’t like that. He’ll just be on his merry way. So, good-bye. Good luck. Oh, by the way, we aren’t real, either.” Guess I won’t be sleeping anymore.
So on the set, I sat there and ho-ho-hoed as I lifted each one of those kids onto my knee. They looked into my eyes with a mixture of bewilderment, joy, and a deep-seated mistrust. Some of them just seemed to be in panic mode, and some of them knew it was all bullshit. Yet they were ready to expound on all of their wishes, from the most materialistic to wanting there to be world peace.
I sat through all of it. Gasping for air through a beard that I swear was made from recycled fiberglass. And