Present Gifts
by Steven Saus

"I don't believe in Santa Claus."

It was not dramatic, just a matter-of-fact eyeroll kind of statement. I had started it, going on about the tooth fairy. It was a simple correlation: Fat dead saints delivering presents in red suits are as improbable as a tutu-wearing winged sprite that has an orthodontic fetish. I saw his eyeroll and raised him an eyebrow.

"Then who brings the presents from Santa?"

"They're from you and Mom." The "duh", unspoken, hung in the air with the smell of turkey, ham, and pie. His friend backed him up.

"Yeah, nobody believes in Santa Claus."

"Hey honey," I called, "if we are buying the presents from Santa, does that mean we don't have to buy him gifts from us, too?"

He got the hint and shut up.

A decade earlier.

"I don't need to get thank you notes."

She gapes at me from the couch. I did not know her eyes got that wide.

"Of course it matters! What are you talking about?"

The smell of marinara wafts from the next room. My mother knows the futility of interfering in our arguments.

"When I give a gift, I want them to be happy. That's all. It doesn't matter who gave it to them."

Her eyes narrow, her voice rumbles threateningly across the room.

"But you have to send thank-you cards."

"Why? Sending a thank you card won't make them any happier."

My son burst up the stairs, a whirlwind of energy and incomprehensible chattering. I slid from the room, escaping her offended sensibilities and restoring some peace to the house.

Two thousand years earlier:

The Child stinks. Not as much as the animals, but He smells of new unwashed baby. His teenage mother is still exhausted from the birthing; his father is puzzled at the richly dressed men in the stable doorway. In the past, richly dressed men always meant richly dressed problems.

"We have come to see the boy."

He glances back at the boy and his wife. He missed the solidity of working with hammer and wood. He longed for the surety of knowing that a swing of the axe led to a cut in the wood, the certainty that a seed from a tree led to a tree just like it. She nods at him from the golden hay of her bed. He turns back to the travelers, passes the nod on to them, and they somberly file inward.

The first comes forward, laying the box at the base of the manger. He bends over the Child, squinting in the poor light. His sonorous voice booms through the small shack.

"Remember me, oh Lord, and this gift I bring you."

The second traveler approaches, first holding his box over the Child for its approval. His voice squeaks like a chorus of nasal rats; the cat's ears swivel and focus on the sound.

"Remember me, oh Lord, and this gift I bring to you."

The third traveler approaches on tiptoe, placing the small wooden box at the base of the manger. He comes no closer, but looks at the child from there. The traveler's eyes crinkle at the Child's expression; a warm smile floods from his face to the young mother. Without a word, he turns to go. The Child's cry surprises everyone. The Child's wave is a purposeful motion, beckoning the third traveler to return. As he leans over the manger, stubby little baby fingers grab the traveler's hat and clutch it close to the Child's chest.

The traveler's companions mutter when the hat is returned. It has become bright red, now lined with white fur. All the long camel ride to his Turkish home, he puzzles over the changed hat, quietly laughing his deep chuckle to himself.

All text of this work is original, and is copyrighted under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. A human-readable summary of the license is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

Happy Holidays.