The Autobiography of Santa Claus

by Jeff Guinn

  It was an impressive speech; Dickens was out of breath at the end of it. I sat thinking for a few moments, then said, “Have you tried writing stories about Christmas? The right book or poem can work Christmas wonders; in America, Washington Irving’s novel and Clement Moore’s poem have done that.”

  Dickens ducked his head, looking ashamed. “I’ve tried, Father Christmas. Some years ago I published ‘A Christmas Dinner,’ a short story about how a family sitting down for their holiday meal is able to forgive past arguments and insults.”

  “A lovely theme,” I commented.

  “Perhaps, but the story was ignored,” Dickens said ruefully. “I then attempted to stir up interest in Christmas by including a holiday tale in The Pickwick Papers. I called this story ‘The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton,’ and in it a cold, unfriendly man who hates the Christmas happiness of others is taken one night by ghostly beings on adventures which teach him how wonderful Christmas is, after all. Well, The Pickwick Papers was widely commented upon, but no one reading it seemed to understand the special Christmas message I meant to convey.”

  “That certainly is too bad,” I said with great sympathy. “You are obviously someone who truly holds Christmas in his heart, and long ago I learned to put my trust in fate. Since we’ve been brought together, I believe it’s meant for us to work on behalf of the holiday. However, I notice it’s getting late, and by the toys scattered about your home I perceive you must be a married man with children.”

  Dickens nodded. “My children are truly the joy of my life, Father Christmas. My wife has taken them today to visit with her parents, and I expect them home momentarily.”

  “It’s best I leave, then,” I said, standing up and stretching. “Be careful not to tell your family about my visit or the things I’ve told you. I always prefer as few people as possible knowing such secrets. Could you, perhaps, lend me copies of your Christmas stories? I’ll read them tonight and tomorrow you might call on me, my wife, and our friend Arthur at his toy factory. We can talk more there.”

  Walking back to Arthur’s in the early evening darkness, enjoying the coolness of the crisp late autumn air, I felt pleased to have met Dickens and wondered how to help him. Arthur, Layla, and I sat up most of the night reading his stories, which were truly excellent. We exclaimed over especially well-written scenes and agreed that such a talented writer as Charles Dickens surely could create a story so wonderful, so moving, that everyone reading it would pledge to celebrate Christmas properly forever afterward.

  “Do you suppose we should pay to have these stories printed again and distributed all over England?” Arthur asked.

  Layla shook her head. “For whatever reason, they have not accomplished their purpose despite being written so well,” she reminded him. “My suggestion would be for Mr. Dickens to try again with a new story.”

  The next morning, Dickens arrived at Arthur’s toy factory promptly at nine. We offered him tea and pastries, then took him on a brief tour of the premises. He was thrilled with the craftsmanship, but positively overwhelmed to find himself in the presence of the man he kept referring to as “King Arthur.”

  “Just yesterday, you didn’t seem surprised to meet Father Christmas,” I said jokingly. “Now, you’re almost hopping up and down in your excitement at meeting my old friend and helper. Why, my feelings might be hurt!”

  “It’s just that I always thought you existed, but never suspected King Arthur did,” Dickens babbled.

  Arthur was red-faced with embarrassment. “Please calm yourself, Mr. Dickens,” he suggested. “When time permits, I’ll be glad to tell you about my real experiences, if you like, not those grand, made-up adventures you’ve apparently heard and believed. For now, I think we all should listen to Santa—Father Christmas—because he has an idea for you.”

  “I enjoyed reading your Christmas stories last night, and truly believe you are one of the finest writers ever to live on this Earth,” I began, and it was Dickens’s turn to blush. “I found ‘The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton’ to be especially good, but I think most readers would find it less a tale about Christmas than a ghost story that accidentally took place on December twenty-fifth. Why not take the best parts of that story—the mean-tempered man who hated the Christmas joy of others, and his nighttime visitors who changed his ways—and build a whole new book around them, making certain this time that every reader would realize the author is delivering a message about Christmas, and how everyone should celebrate it!”

  Dickens smiled and replied, “Why, that’s exactly what I’ll do! It will be a few months before I begin, of course. Right now, I’m writing a novel called Martin Chuzzlewit and I must finish that book first.”

  Arthur said quickly, “Mr. Dickens, in ten weeks it will be December twenty-fifth. You’ll find that, when working with Father Christmas, people can accomplish things in a tenth of the time normal jobs take to be done. If you mean what you say about loving Christmas and wanting to restore it again in England, I suggest you drop everything else and begin writing the story Father Christmas has suggested.”

  Arthur’s voice had a tone of great authority; Dickens was visibly impressed. “I’ll do exactly as you say, King Arthur.”

  I added, “Mr. Dickens, I don’t know your normal method of writing. I believe, though, if you close yourself in your study with a good supply of paper, ink, and quill pens, you’ll find you have all the inspiration, energy, and time you need.”

  Dickens hurried away. We waited, not wanting to contact him for fear of disturbing his writing. Then, late one night during the second week of November, there was a knock on Arthur’s door. Charles Dickens came in clutching a cloth sack.

  “I’ve brought you the manuscript of my new book,” he said nervously. “I have no idea whether it’s good or not. Every day as I sat at my desk it seemed as though an invisible hand gripped mine and made my pen write unexpected words at terrifying speed. If you would, please read this book, and when you’ve finished come call on me at my home and tell me what you think. Its title is A Christmas Carol.”

  So that night Arthur, Layla, and I read all about Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghosts who came to visit him. We spent hours laughing and crying and finally rejoicing when the old man repented his meanness and promised to forever “keep Christmas in his heart.”

  The next morning we hurried to Dickens’s house. Although it was early, his wife and children were already gone. Dickens asked us to come inside, offered us refreshments, then blurted, “Is my story all right?”

  “Is it all right?” Arthur asked incredulously. “Mr. Dickens, you have written the finest story of Christmas that will ever be printed on a page! Bless you, sir, and may you feel great satisfaction for a job well done!”

  I echoed Arthur’s sentiments, but Layla hesitated.

  “I agree A Christmas Carol is wonderful, Mr. Dickens,” she observed, “and I hope I might mention one small concern without seeming unappreciative of your effort.”

  “Newspaper critics have said many harsh things about my work,” Dickens chuckled. “Please, say whatever you like.”

  “This concerns the crippled son of Scrooge’s employee Bob Cratchit,” my wife explained. “He’s a wonderful boy as you describe him, and I’m so glad he doesn’t die as Scrooge once foresaw, but I just don’t think you’ve given him an appropriate name.”

  “You mean Little Fred?” Dickens asked. “I chose that name because it’s so common. Everyone who reads A Christmas Carol will know someone named Fred.”

  “That’s just the problem,” Layla said. “Your story is wonderfully uncommon, and so are the names of the rest of your characters—‘Ebenezer Scrooge,’ ‘Jacob Marley.’ The very names of the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future will help readers picture them in their minds. But ‘Little Fred’ lacks any flair, and I’m afraid his character will be overlooked as a result.”

  “My wife never offers criticism without a solution, as well,” I told Dickens. “Layla, do you perhaps hav
e another name to suggest?”

  “The child should have a name that springs from the tongue,” she replied. “I’ve always loved the sound of the letter ‘T,’ and I wonder if you might consider renaming your character ‘Tiny Tim’?”

  “It’s perfect!” Dickens barked, and snatching his manuscript from Arthur’s hand, he took a quill pen and made the necessary corrections immediately.

  Everything went rapidly after that. To help keep down the price of the book and make it affordable to even the poorest readers, we provided Charles Dickens with money to pay some of the cost of having A Christmas Carol printed. It was published shortly before Christmas in that year of 1843 and was an instant sensation. Christmas 1844 found all of England ready to celebrate the holiday again with open joy and merry festivities. Father Christmas was once again welcome in almost every English home, and it was a special thrill for me to deliver those presents.

  We’d hoped Charles Dickens would eventually join us forever, but this was not to be. He had other books to write and, only a year after A Christmas Carol was published, tried his luck with another holiday tale, The Chimes. Dickens told friends that this new work “knocked the Carol out of the field,” but of course this didn’t happen. Charles Dickens went on to write several great books, David Copperfield being perhaps the best, but he had already outdone any writers of the past or future in creating the finest Christmas fiction possible. Certainly for the rest of his life Charles Dickens was identified with Christmas, and this was only right.

  Layla and I stayed with Arthur for several more years, enjoying the pleasant task of gift-giving in a country where we’d too long been unwelcome. Just as I was beginning to think of myself as Father Christmas instead of Santa, the urge came upon us to return to America. Felix, Leonardo, Sarah, Willie Skokan, and Ben Franklin undoubtedly had things under control there, but that exciting new nation was certain to suffer the inevitable pains of political and social growth. We wanted to be there, and took a steamship back across the Atlantic.

  Dr. O’Hanlon wasn’t an evil man, just a skeptical one. Although he no longer believed in me, he didn’t want to make Virginia sad. So he suggested she write a letter to the “Question and Answer” section editor of the New York Sun newspaper asking him if I existed.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus”

  Welcome back!” Felix called out as Layla and I stepped off the ramp of the steamship and onto the dock in New York harbor in the spring of 1860. “The reindeer missed you. The rest of us did, too, of course.”

  We had to take a series of trains from New York to Cooperstown. Willie Skokan was waiting there at the station with a horse-drawn carriage. After we’d loaded our luggage and climbed aboard, it was still another hour-long drive to our farmhouse. Ben Franklin, Leonardo, and Sarah greeted us there, along with someone we’d never met. Layla and I were struck by his dark, intelligent eyes and the bright cloth turban wound around his head.

  “This is Sequoyah, a Cherokee who invented an alphabet so his people could have a written language as well as a spoken one,” Ben explained.

  Sequoyah smiled and shook our hands. “I see you’re staring at my scarf,” he said politely to Layla. “Not all Indians wear feathers and headdresses, you know. This cloth keeps my head protected from the sun when it’s hot, and from the dampness when it’s raining.”

  “It’s a very attractive scarf,” Layla said politely. “I didn’t mean to stare; I haven’t met many Indians before.”

  “Except for the color of our skin, we’re the same as you,” Sequoyah replied. “Sadly, many people don’t understand that.”

  “Sequoyah can’t even go to town since many people there insult him because he’s an Indian,” Sarah said sharply. “It’s disgraceful. Felix and I first met him in Washington, D.C., where he was representing his tribe in 1829, when the government decided to force the Cherokee to move from their homes in North Carolina to Oklahoma.”

  “I didn’t do a very good job of representing,” Sequoyah admitted. “We were forced to move anyway. Many of us died on the way. The Cherokee now call that journey ‘The Trail of Tears.’ ”

  “We’ve always made a point of giving gifts to the Cherokee children on that Oklahoma reservation ever since,” Sarah continued. “After you left for England, we were able to convince Sequoyah to come and join us, so his talents can be useful forever.”

  “Soon I hope to translate Mr. Dickens’s wonderful story A Christmas Carol into the Cherokee alphabet,” Sequoyah said. “The children in our tribe will love it.”

  “Isn’t it a terrible thing that this intelligent, gifted man can’t even walk into a store in our village and be treated like everyone else?” Sarah asked indignantly.

  “There’s more trouble coming about skin color, and soon,” Willie Skokan said solemnly, and we all were surprised because Willie seldom said much, preferring to listen to the rest of us. “The coming war’s all about the slaves. It will be terrible.”

  Willie wouldn’t say any more, so Felix offered details. “Santa, Layla, so much has happened since you’ve been gone. Abraham Lincoln’s just been elected president. All of the Southern states are going to try and leave the Union because their citizens believe slavery won’t be allowed anymore. President Lincoln won’t let the states leave—secede is the word being used—so everyone expects there will be a civil war, with the Northern states fighting the Southern ones. Slavery is the worst thing in the history of the world,” he concluded, sounding bitter.

  I wondered for a moment at the anger and pain in his voice, then remembered Felix had once been a slave himself.

  The United States had been steadily expanding to the west, Felix explained. Where the original thirteen colonies had mostly hugged the Atlantic coast and extended partially inland, now American explorers and settlers were swarming all the way to the far Pacific Ocean.

  “In 1847, only twenty thousand people lived in the region called California,” Felix said. “In 1848, gold was discovered there. By 1852, two hundred fifty-five thousand people had settled in California.”

  “Our gift-giving will have to cover a lot more territory,” I said thoughtfully.

  “We’ll have plenty of time to plan,” Felix predicted glumly. “This so-called civil war has got to come soon, and I expect it to last for a long while. Since war reduces our special powers, many American children will wait in vain for Santa until the fighting is finally over.”

  Felix was right. The Civil War broke out in April 1861 and lasted until 1865. All wars are terrible, but this one was worse than most. Families argued over the issue of slavery, and sometimes brothers fought on opposing sides. Battles raged across the country. As far as gift-giving was concerned, we had to content ourselves with delivering presents to those areas where armies weren’t lurking.

  But even while my friends and I were so limited, the story of Santa Claus became more widespread. Soldiers in both armies dressed up like me on Christmas Day to hand out presents to their comrades. Books, magazines, and newspapers contained stories about me, made-up stories where I did amazing things. Often these stories were accompanied by pictures, and no two pictures were alike. Some artists drew me rail-thin, others roly-poly. Sometimes I had a long white beard and other times just a mustache and goatee. The reindeer and sleigh made popular by Clement Moore’s poem were always shown, though.

  And the renewed holiday spirit in England caused by A Christmas Carol continued to flourish. In 1862, a British company even printed and sold something called “Christmas cards,” cards wishing people “A Happy Christmas” or “A blessed New Year.”

  It took another dozen years for the idea to catch on in America, but once it did every family seemed to send Christmas cards to friends and loved ones. It was a fine new tradition.

  Arthur, Francis, Attila, and Dorothea pleaded with the rest of us to leave America and return to Europe, but there were always wars there, too. The eight of us in the United States were determine
d to bide our time until the Civil War was finally over. But when it was, in 1865, bad feelings remained between the North and South. President Lincoln, who might have been able to help both sides work out their problems, was assassinated less than a week after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The next few years were difficult for everyone.

  We did our best to help heal the country, hoping to remind everyone that Christmas is the season of forgiveness and love by bringing our gifts to as many children as possible every Christmas Eve. My team of reindeer whirled me all over the night skies, and the rest of the group fanned out across the country to deliver their loads of toys by less spectacular means. Still, we found we couldn’t cover all the necessary territory if we kept our only base in upstate New York. Fortunately, in 1869 the first railroad tracks were completed that linked the American East and West. In 1872, Yellowstone became the first American national park, a lovely area of wild, natural beauty. Its trees, lakes, mountains, and wild animals were protected by the government. Quietly, Sarah, Sequoyah, and Willie Skokan established another base for us there.

  Great strides were made in science. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. Three years later, Thomas Edison perfected the first electric lamp. Seventeen years after that, Henry Ford built his first automobile.

  America was becoming a modern country. But as people learned more about science, they somehow began to doubt things that couldn’t be explained with formulas and blueprints. They lost the ability to know the difference between illusion and magic.

  “This is getting ridiculous,” Ben Franklin announced one day in the autumn of 1896. “Adults all over this country are deciding there can’t really be a Santa Claus because he wasn’t created by a scientist. Why, Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest scientist of all time, is the one who made it possible for reindeer to fly! For two cents I’d grab all the grown-ups in America and make them take a long ride in your sleigh!”