When I saw a trailer for the film Bad Santa, in which a department-store Santa Claus screeches at a child and his elf sexually demeans the store’s head of security, I thought, someone finally got it right.
Home movies from the time show the fear and determination in our faces as we watched Santa enter–a thin man with an ugly, stained blue-and-pink burlap Santa mask to which was pinned a flattened cotton beard. Mostly we kept our eyes glued to the thick black leather belt doubled up in his hand, which he raised above his head in a threatening gesture and not infrequently used to whip the backsides of the older boys if they faltered under interrogation.
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“Promise?”
“Patrick says naughty words, Santa.”
The other grown-ups would laugh, shaking their heads and roaring out other misdeeds. We kids stared, mesmerized by this surreal humiliation of our elders.
Even after I was past the age of believing, things didn’t change much at Christmastime. My brothers and I simply switched from frightened victims to coconspirators. As noisy, gawky teenagers we joined the adults in inciting Santa or hamming it up as the remorseful accused at Santa’s feet.
