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The person who I miss dearly because he is not in my life any more is a person who a lot of people know and some chose to forget because at the mention of his name some awful feelings come forth. Other people pretend that they never knew him because their parents forbade them to. The person of who I speak is very rarely mentioned by grown-ups unless in jest or fibbing, this seemingly unappreciated man is Santa Claus.
As a little kid, the best part about Thanksgiving was the fact that the next day, his helpers appeared at all the local malls and shopping centers. Of course I thought, at first, that this red cladded man was St. Nick but after awhile, I accepted that they were only helpers. It never bothered me they weren't real, as long as the big guy was up north.
In fourth grade, I moved to this area from a, shall we say, naive area that still believed in the Jolly ol' Elf. My new classmates weren't as nice as my old friends, nor were they as believing as I. They kept telling me that he's not real or that my parents put the gifts under the tree or my favorite, "He used to be alive but he got stuck in a chimney and starved to death." Odd, yes but still most of it was true and when confronted with this insightful information, my parents' faces sank and the told me the truth. That same year, and for that matter the next few, Christmas was nothing like it used to be. The one feeling of magic was gone and this destroyed the whole Christmas thing.
I almost gave up on him, thinking he really was dead in my mind but then I started seeing all the good things that came about because of him in little kids. I was reading letters that they sent to him from the first grades and sent to the high school to be answered by some orginazation's members. Thy're total belief in him put a new feeling in Christmas. Although I know he's not real in my mind like he used to be, but he's still flying in my heart.
Sep 23, 1992
E