I Help Santa

Thanksgiving has passed, and Christmas has come to Fannin County. The Christmas season starts in the City of Blue Ridge with an annual celebration that has small town America written all over it. It’s called Light Up Blue Ridge, and it’s always held on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving because people hereabouts have a proper appreciation that Thanksgiving and Christmas are two distinct holidays. Christmas decorations should never appear until after the Thanksgiving turkey has been consumed.

My son, Mike, and I were fortunate enough to be a small part of the festivities this year because an organization which I belong to, Feed Fannin, has the lucrative “get your kid’s picture taken with Santa Claus” concession, and we volunteered to help. We arrived in town around noon and discovered that downtown Blue Ridge was jammed with people. We had to walk a couple of blocks to get to the town park in the center of Blue Ridge. The park was festooned with Christmas lights, and a huge Christmas tree had been erected. The local merchants and organizations had set up tents in the park and were selling food to the masses. Apparently boiled peanuts are considered holiday fare in the South.

The festivities started at noon with a parade, complete with Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus riding in a horse drawn wagon, through downtown Blue Ridge. The parade went down East Main Street, turned left along the north end of the park, and then turned left to go south on West Main Street. From start to finish the entire parade route was about ten blocks which gives you an idea of how small the downtown area is. You could watch the parade pass on East Main Street and then walk across the park and watch it pass again on West Main Street. It’s like having the parade in stereo.

The festivities end when Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus press a switch and light up the Christmas tree and lights in the park. This happens around eight o’clock in the evening. Almost immediately afterward, everyone goes home and the sidewalks are rolled up. If you like the late night life, I suggest you do not move to a small town.

Mike and I arrived on scene just after the parade started. There were probably a thousand people lining the streets to watch the parade. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of families with kids eager to catch a glimpse of Santa. The Christmas parade was a lot like the annual Fourth of July parade, only with Christmas decorations rather than patriotic bunting. The parade participants were the usual cast of characters. There were local politicians, the county sheriff and the town’s police chief, firemen and EMS personal driving their fire trucks and emergency vehicles, the high school marching band, local boy and girl scout troops, floats built by local businesses, clubs and organizations, and people driving classic and antique cars.

As far as I could see the only groups missing from the parade were the local political parties. They participated in the Fourth of July parade. I speculate that the local Republican Party was still celebrating its shellacking of the Dems, the local Tea Party could not get organized in time, and the local Democratic Party was being politically correct for fear of offending any atheists or non-Christians in Fannin County (which, as you may imagine, is not a large voting block in these parts).

Feed Fannin set up its Santa Claus concession in a small gazebo in the park. Mike volunteered to work the camera and take the pictures of the kids sitting on Santa’s lap, and I volunteered to keep Mrs. Claus supplied with candy canes to hand out to the kids after they talked to Santa. My secondary job was to club any unruly children into submission. Thankfully, there were no problems like that.

It was a chilly day. Fortunately, I was stationed near Mr. and Mrs. Clause which means I was also near the large propane heater that had been set up to keep the Clauses warm. No one in Feed Fannin knew exactly how the heater operated. They got it going, but I was a little apprehensive that it might blow any minute. I had visions of Mr. and Mrs. Claus running from the gazebo as flaming torches. That would have traumatized an entire generation of Fannin County children.

Mike and I were enjoying the parade when we realized that a long line of parents and kids had already assembled to have their pictures taken with Santa. This made us a little nervous that we might screw up and start a riot. We didn't realize that it was such a big deal. Thank God that things went smoothly.

I have to say that Santa and Mrs. Claus looked great. Santa’s white beard was genuine, and he played the part perfectly. Someone told me that he does this every year and really gets into character once he starts. I guess he’s a method actor. Mrs. Claus was great too. She must have worked in quality control at one time because she kept handing cracked candy canes back to me as unsuitable. It wasn’t my fault they were cracked; they came that way. I was working my butt off taking the candy canes out of their boxes, checking them for cracks and keeping Mr. Claus supplied while trying to keep an eye on the propane heater and be on the lookout for kamikaze kids. I don’t think she truly appreciated the stress I was under.

The candy canes were individually wrapped in tight plastic. It wasn’t real obvious that they were. I kept asking Mrs. Claus to tell the parents to take the plastic off before giving the candy cane to their kid. I was concerned that some little kid would collapse his head trying to suck a plastic wrapped candy cane.

I discovered that there are four types of kids who have their picture taken with Santa. There are the true believers who are eager to let Santa know what they want for Christmas. There are older kids who are not sure whether Santa is real or not, but are hedging their bets by talking to Santa just in case.

Then there are the children who are absolutely terrified of Santa and do anything they can to get out of Santa’s grasp. It looked to me like Santa had done some steer wrestling in his day. I don’t blame the kids for being frightened. They were enjoying the parade and all of the sudden their parents plopped them on the lap of a fat guy with a beard wearing funny clothes and a weird hat. I’m surprised that psychiatrists haven’t discovered a condition like Post Santa Stress Syndrome.

My favorite are the ones kids who go stiff and motionless when they are placed on Santa’s lap. It’s like they’ve gone catatonic. They are usually babies who have no clue what Christmas is, much less what is happening to them. Mike said they look like turnips with big eyes. I was concerned that one was actually brain dead.

There’s nothing like Christmas in a small town. It’s a genuine holiday rather than an excuse for stores to sell stuff. Being here at this time of the season invokes in me some of the feelings I had about Christmas as a small child before I became old and jaded, and there is nothing wrong with that in my book.