Santa in Therapy

Santa Claus enters Dr. Juzar’s office fully dressed in traditional garb. Red coat with white fluffy trim, red trousers and suspenders, jet-black boots, golden belt buckle… Everything’s in place except for his red stocking cap, which he clutches sheepishly in his white gloved hands. 

He hangs his head low, his white fluffy beard pressed against his chest, as he raises his white eyebrows to look up shyly at the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist sits on an oversized easy chair with his legs crossed while he gently gnaws at the pink eraser of a yellow pencil. On his lap, he has a yellow legal pad with the words handwritten at the top: “Patient: Kris Kringle - Session One: 12/21/21.” The psychiatrist faces an empty chair that’s identical to the one he’s sitting on. Santa makes the easy assumption that’s where he’s expected to sit. Without exchanging a single word, he does so.

Santa gives the psychiatrist another droopy-eyed glance before frowning and deciding to break the silence.

“Perhaps I should start,” he says.

The psychiatrist upturns his palm and motions it towards Santa as if to say by all means.

Santa brings his hands together and folds his fingers, letting them rest on his bulging belly. His eyes search around the homely office for a blank space on a wall to stare at while talking. He ends up finding one between a bushy green fern and a motivational poster. The poster has a picture of a mountainous landscape, the text below it reading “Believe & Succeed.”

“First of all,” Santa says somberly, “I don’t consider myself a happy man.”

The psychiatrist frowns and presses the eraser of his pencil to his chin.

“Sure, the world sees me as this jolly, happy-go-lucky fellow who single-handedly brings about good tidings and cheer every Christmas… But it seems every Christmas that goes by, the more it gets taken out of me.”

Santa flashes the psychiatrist another tentative look. He returns the look back to him.

“And I mean,” he continues, “I think I’m good at my job. I think I am very good. I don’t know, Doc, you’ve seen my work. What do you think?”

Dr. Juzar flashes Santa a sharp grin and gives him a confident thumbs-up.

“Thank you, Doc,” Santa says, exhaling deeply through his nostrils. “That means a lot to me. It really does.”

The doctor grins widely.

“But you see, Doc… I’ve had this gig for a long time. A very long time. I can hardly remember when it all started. For centuries now, I’ve been Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Sinterklaas, Kris Kringle, Papa Noel, Ole Saint Nick, Sheng dan lao ren… I get called so many different names, I hardly know what to call myself. I once tried to get the elves at the workshop to agree on just one name for me. What would you like us to call you? they asked me. I didn’t want to favor one culture’s name for me over another, so I picked one I thought wouldn't cause much controversy: Steve. The elves were laughing about it for weeks.

“And these children. They send me letter after letter. Christmas lists drawn out in barely legible handwriting. Clearly, just they use whatever writing utensil they get their hands on first. Crayon, yellow color pencil, dried up old magic marker… They don’t give it a second thought. I once had a kid send me a note that I swear I looked at for hours and couldn’t tell if he was asking for a toy car or a guitar. He even provided a little picture, but it was just a brown square with some lines drawn across it. Those lines could have been guitar strings or the windows of a car.  Sometimes I have to flip a coin and just hope I get it right…

“Oh, and all these things. I know most of these kids don’t actually care about the stuff they ask me for… I mean, occasionally I give a child something I know they're going to treasure for years to come, and that always feels nice. Sometimes I even get to give children something that ends up shaping the course of their entire lives. I’ve given surgeons their first game of Operation, future pop singers their first toy karaoke machine, future architects their first Lego sets. And I feel honored to be part of that, I really do. But for the most part, all these kids ever want from me is just plain garbage. Things that'll hold their interest for what. A week? A month? I feel like I’m busting my hump every year to make stuff that ends up in people's garage sales the next summer. And I can just hear it, right around springtime, when the kids have lost all interest in their Christmas toys. They already have the little gears turning in their heads about what they're going to ask me for next year. And do you know what that means for me? More letters.

“But I haven’t even mentioned the most soul-crushing thing. Every once in awhile, a kid gets it in their head to send me a sob story, like how their parents are about to split up, and they want my help getting them back together. Some of these kids even go so far as to say I don’t want any toys this year if only you can get my parents to get back together, as if somehow that show of selflessness would increase their chances of me noticing them or something. And listen, I feel for these kids. From the bottom of my heart, I do. If I could get their parents back together, I would. But I’m just a guy who runs a toy factory at the North Pole. I can't fix people’s marriages. Do these kids think I have the power of mind control or something? And it really, really hurts me inside to turn away suffering kids like that when there is nothing I can do.”

The psychiatrist rests his fist to his chin and gives Santa a sympathetic smirk.

“And delivery day, Christmas Eve. Every house, it’s always milk and cookies, milk and cookies… Except for the houses that just leave me empty plates with crumbs and empty glasses with milk residue. It's the parents that get to them before I can have a chance. They don’t believe in me, you see. Now, don’t get me wrong. I like milk and cookies as much as the next fellow. But just because I’m immortal, it doesn’t mean I’m insusceptible to diabetes. And why can’t people get more creative with what they leave me? How about some lasagna or a salad? Every once in awhile, a kid actually leaves something healthy on the fireplace like carrot sticks or some celery. But then I realize those are meant for the reindeer. Because heaven forbid I eat something intended for the reindeer.

“And speaking of the reindeer, boy does the media ever get it wrong about them. I go to see a movie about me at the cinema, and the reindeer are depicted as wise, mostly sentient beings. They are low maintenance, are able to understand English somehow, and seem to always have my back in a sticky situation. But let me tell you something, those reindeer are dumber than a box of rocks. Real dullards, if you ask me. They have just one job. To get me from Point A to Point B. But if I left it up to their own devices, they’d take me from Point A to Point Q.

“One year, I thought about replacing the reindeer with animals more suited for the job. Welsh ponies, to be exact. Boy would I ever like to hook one of those sweet honeys up to my rig… I’d be riding in style from here to the South Pole… But no. The missus wasn’t going to have it it. She’s attached to the reindeer, you see. They’re like her children. And it’s Christmas tradition for Santa and the eight reindeer to deliver toys to all the little boys and girls, blah, blah, blah, blah...” 

Santa lifts up a hand, loosely slapping his fingers against his thumb to mock how Mrs. Claus talks.

“Instead of letting me get Welsh ponies, do you know what she gets me instead? Another reindeer. She calls it Rudolph. And it has this really bizarre genetic condition that makes its nose glow in the dark. Freaky stuff. The wife tells me He’ll help guide your way through the foggy Christmas Eve night… Hah! Let me tell you. That reindeer is just as dumb as the next one. Sometimes on Christmas Eve I get turned around and mistakenly visit the same house twice. I ask Rudolph how could he have let this happen, since he’s supposed to be my navigator and whatnot. Do you know what he tells me? …Nothing! Nothing, because he’s a dumb reindeer.”

Santa lets out a great sigh.

“And that isn’t to mention how my bag of toys always seems to get caught in those antlers of theirs…”

Dr. Juzar takes a quick glance at his wristwatch.

“Are we running out of time, Doc?” Santa asks, pushing up his white eyebrows.

The psychiatrist closes one eye and holds up a hand to make a small gap between the index finger and thumb. 

“Ah, well, I’ll hurry it up then,” says Santa. 

“Now about Mrs. Claus… I love her with every fiber of my being. She has a heart of pure gold. But let me tell you something. When the lights go out at night, and we’re all alone in the bedroom just the two of us, that woman gets freaky.”

The psychiatrist raises his eyebrows.

“No, no, no,” Santa says, holding out his palm. “Not what you’re thinking… What I mean is she talks in her sleep. The things she says, it’s the stuff of nightmares. And I'm not talking about normal nightmares like she went out of the house and forgot to put on pants. Or there’s a swamp creature chasing after her or something. She says these really screwed up things like Save the esophagus juice for that half-dead skunk. Or There are snapping turtles trapped in my eyes and they are burning me! Things that make absolutely no sense but give me the heebie-jeebies. And making it worse is the way she talks in her sleep. It sounds so eerie. She sounds like one of those Munchkins in the Lollipop League from The Wizard of Oz if it were falling into an endless pit.

“One time she kept tossing and turning, repeating the phrase over and over again Beware of Egg! Beware of Egg! …You see, that evening, I'd snuck some egg salad from the fridge before going bed and didn't tell her about it. I stayed awake all night wondering what might have been in it.

“And she’s always nagging me about this and that. It’s usually about housework. I keep telling her, whenever we get into these little spats, I employ literally thousands of elves. I’m sure we could get some of them to come over and pick up our house a little bit every once in awhile. But no. Mrs. Claus absolutely insists on doing the housework herself. It builds character, she says. That’s good and noble and everything, but then why does she have to go and rope me into doing half of it. I dry the dishes, I take out the trash, I make the bed, I shovel the driveway… and if I’m tired one day and feel like neglecting something, it’s like the whole world is coming to an end. Let me tell you something I learned during my days of bachelorhood: If you wait long enough, the dishes actually dry themselves.

“But of course I love the missus. I wouldn’t trade the centuries I spent with her for all the riches in the universe. I remember when we first met, we were in love like two teenage kids. It was real puppy love. I’d take on her on reindeer rides any place she wanted to go—the Pyramids of Giza, the Great Wall of China, the geysers in Yellowstone... The Lighthouse of Alexandria was still around back then, so we even got to see that.

“And you know, I do have to appreciate that she sacrificed an awful lot for me. There I was, an immortal being just looking for love. I didn’t have much going for me. I had questionable hygiene habits and was betrothed in eternal servitude to all of mankind. There she was, a widowed mother, about to be a grandmother. We met in her village in Bavaria. She had to abandon all of that for me and perhaps even any hope of seeing her family again in the afterlife. To this day, I sometimes catch her crying to herself when she thinks about it. Her children, her grandchildren, her parents, all long-gone. And when she does that, I can't help but cry a little for myself as well. After all, I’m just a being conjured into existence by the collective of humanity’s imagination. I never knew what it was like to have parents. I’ll never be able to conceive children. Much less have grandchildren.”

Santa eyes are starting to mist over and turn pink. He looks at the psychiatrist to see him much in the same condition.

“Geez, Doc, I didn’t mean to get all depressing on you,” Santa says. He pulls out a silk red handkerchief and blows his nose in it, which makes a noise reminiscent of an elephant trumpeting. “But now I hope you can understand the kinds of things I have constantly churning in my mind.”

Dr. Juzar starts to beam at Santa gently and gives him a slow, reassuring nod.

“So I don’t know Doc… Do you think there’s anything you can do to help me? I mean, Christmas is just around the corner…”

The doctor opens his mouth to speak, but then he is interrupted by the sound of his wristwatch beeping.

“Ah,” Santa says. “That must mean time’s up.”

Santa puts his hands on the arms of his chair and hoists himself up.

“I really enjoyed this session, though,” Santa says as he makes his way towards the door and opens it. “Same time, same place next week? It’ll be after Christmas, so I'm sure we’ll have lots to talk about.”

The psychiatrist smiles.