Category: Blog

Undercover Santa

“This is Cookie Text,” I said brightly as I answered the phone via the bluetooth in my car. 

It was an older man calling, and he wanted to know if I made cut-out cookies for Christmas, the ones in different shapes and frosting colors. I quickly responded that we do not make that type of cookie. Usually at this point I’d explain to a caller what we do make and how it’s awesome, but his curtness made me skip the sales pitch. 

“Then where can I get them?” he asked gruffly. More gruffly than I thought someone who was requesting my help should be.

I gave him a referral to a bakery in Hampton that I know does them, and he interrupted that they needed a week’s notice. He must have already called them. I found the week turnaround time reasonable, but undoubtedly he wanted them sooner than that.

He carried on: ’If I were younger I’d open a bakery that would offer holiday cookies and such and such and this and that, all sorts of  things they make in California that nobody is smart enough to make here. I’d give all of you a run for your money,’ was the gist of his rant. 

Beginning to feel offended I said, “Well, I have to say that I am very proud of what we make,” clinging desperately to the hint of sunshine I was maintaining in my voice. Perhaps he didn’t realize he was insulting me?

“Well, what do you make?” He asked, or so I thought I heard, it was suddenly difficult to hear him over a tv blaring in the background.

I responded that we make cookie cakes and when asked I described to him what a cookie cake is. 

“Is that your TV?” I inquired, as its blare and his voice crossed over each other making my brain spiral. I took a deep breath.

“Yes, and I can’t turn it down, my wife has the remote. Do you make these cakes in a sugar cookie option? And could you put Santa on them?”

As he spoke I’d started thinking of making that noise with my mouth that sounds like static and hanging up the phone, hoping he’d think the call had disconnected. 

Instead I let him know that it was a yes to both: we do make sugar cookie cakes and we could put a Santa on them. 

“Well now we’re talking.”

The difficult conversation had me fully aware  that we’d been talking, but I welcomed the softening of his tone. He wondered where he’d have to go to get cookies from me, and I quickly explained that we deliver everything. This got him even more interested and further lightened his tone.

“I haven’t been able to do much these past few years with my wife’s condition, but I was Santa for over 40 years. I’m retired now, but I look the same.”

My heart softened a bit. I was back at the McDonalds on Pembroke Avenue in Hampton, I was seven years old and there with my mother and brother. An older gentleman with a white beard and mustache was sitting in a booth by himself drinking a cup of coffee. He was wearing a button down shirt that was white with blue stripes, like something my dad would wear. My mom explained that he was Santa but he wasn’t wearing his usual uniform. 

I’m not sure when she colluded with him, I didn’t see it, but she soon encouraged my brother and I to say hello. We hesitantly approached the man in the booth. He greeted us as Santa would, but was a bit soft-spoken which played into my thinking that this conversation was an undercover operation. If he’d been wearing his red suit surely he’d be more robust, now was the time for discretion.

He asked my brother and me a thing or two about ourselves and then, being nowhere near Christmastime, he encouraged us to be good children throughout the year, and to be helpful to our mother. 

I don’t know if that undercover Santa  was simply a nice old man who’d been told often he favored Santa so he was willing to take on the persona, or if my mom had bribed him with a second coffee hoping his influence would  get us to be better behaved.

Now here I was, forty-five years later, on the phone with a second undercover Santa, one who seemed to be desperately missing his days of donning Santa’s persona and feeling its joy.

“I’m sorry your wife isn’t well,” I said.

“Between her condition, and a lot of stuff going on, and a family suicide, it’s been a lot, a lot, I haven’t done anything for years. I am trying to get back into it.”

“It,” I presumed, was the Christmas Spirit. I was putting together that the holiday cookies he was pursuing were a first step in that direction.

He told me he had to get off the phone so he could get to an appointment at the VA hospital, and that he’d call me later.

I offered to email him some more information, and send a few photos so he’d have a better idea of what I was offering to make for him. I didn’t dream of routing him to the website to place his order. I knew this should be handled by me personally.

In the course of the call his initial presentation as a cranky geezer had faded to reveal who he really was: someone who needed a hand trying to make his way out of a dark place. We hung up with the promise to be in touch soon to finalize his order.

I believe I will think of him each time I encounter a red-suited-Santa this holiday season. 

Maybe I’ll wonder what each Santa’s life looks like when they are not wearing their jolly red suit, or maybe I’ll just say a little prayer for the undercover Santa I met on the phone. I think I’ll do both. Hopefully each Santa I see will encourage me throughout the coming year to hold tight a few extra moments to the sunshine in my voice. I don’t ever know when that light will find a very slim opening to sneak in to and begin to spread.