A Christmas Song

’Zat You, Santa Claus?

L

ET’S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT. IT WAS NICK’S IDEA

to sell me the house. I was passing by when I saw him putting up a ‘For Sale By Owner’ sign. Though I knew we couldn’t afford such a grand old mansion, I felt I had to look because my family was in a tight spot. The little house we were renting had sold, and we’d been unable to find a house that fit both our budget and our family of four.

He was an older man with a white beard, wavy white hair and a twinkle in his eye. When he told me his name was Nick, I thought he might be putting me on. After a quick tour and a short parlay, the price we hit upon was way too low, and I wasn’t sure if he was a con man or if he had just looked in my eyes and seen how very much I wanted to buy his house.

The actual price seemed less important to him than my agreeing to meet his verbal conditions, an understanding between gentlemen, which required me to care for the house and to keep up the standards of the neighborhood. The yard, the trees, the paint and the gutters—it all had to be done right. I was even supposed to clean the chimney, which sounded funny coming from a white-haired guy named Nick.

I wanted to consult with my wife, of course, but Nick said there was no time. It was a take it or leave it deal, requiring each of us to make a giant leap of faith. And so we took that leap, with Nick selling me his grand home for what I could afford to pay. You’d have to admit, that’s a better gift than a partridge in a pear tree.

Because of his name and his appearance, my family came to think of him as St. Nick, a Santa Claus who walked among us, and who, after leaving his Christmas gift, chimney and all, vanished into the air like St. Nick before returning to the North Pole.

It wasn’t till we moved in and neighbors began welcoming us with gifts of Christmas lights that we discovered that neighborhood standards meant putting up thousands of lights each December for the kind of display that I thought was the tacky side of Christmas.

Before meeting Nick, there was little love between me and the holiday season. The death of my older brother when I was a boy had left me dreading the very approach of December. My bah-humbug attitude included gripes about the commercialization of spiritual traditions and a reluctance to celebrate with my family, but these were seasonal maladies—a 12-Days-of-Christmas Syndrome not uncommon among people who’ve lost loved ones during the most joyful time of the year.

There’s a clinical term for those who get depressed at Christmas—Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. Fortunately, my sadness really was temporary. By New Year’s Day, I’d be good as new, so the primary problem was that I did a poor job of hiding my Grinchiness from my wife and from our kids, who loved the holiday and wanted me to join in.

Complicating matters, we lost another family member that first Christmas in our new home. My father, who everyone knew as The Colonel, died in a car accident. A hero to the end, he shielded my son, David, from harm in that accident, and to this day I wonder if I can ever live up to The Colonel’s legacy.

Nick’s gift of our new home helped to heal our family in that time of need and helped us renew the tradition of Walker family Christmas celebrations. Nick’s gift also inspired me to write my Christmas story as a simple fable, with a few names changed— but not Nick’s, of course, for you can’t make up anything better than a white-haired Christmas angel named Nick.

As my book found more and more readers, people I’d never met sought me out to say how my tale had affected them, many relating how I had helped them come to grips with their own Christmas sadness.

A beautiful home, a stronger family and connections to others were frequent reminders that I owed much to Nick. Even so, there was no way to repay that debt, for since the day Nick sold us the house, I’d never seen him again.

That was ten years ago, ten years of holiday celebrations, never forgetting each year to raise a toast with our neighbors to good old Nick. We’d actually met him, neighbors and friends who had been knitted together by cheer. We believed in the Christmas miracles of our neighborhood, which deepened the faith of many of us in the original Christmas miracle.

Sometimes I envisioned Nick repeating our gift for other families in need, and pictured the joy he must feel to do so much for so many. But other than restoring a lost man’s love of the holiday, I didn’t know anything about him—where he’d come from, how he’d spent his life or where he’d gone after selling his home.

Now I realize the truth—that I didn’t want to know. I had my miracle. And never once had I thought about the cost.

Carol of the Bells

A

ND SO I BEGIN ANOTHER TALE. TEN YEARS AFTER I

last saw Nick, almost in the same spot where I’d watched him hammer in that For Sale sign, I stood at my mailbox and glanced through several Christmas cards. Among the professionally photographed family postcards and the generic Hallmark greeting cards, there was one letter that stood out—a beautiful envelope that was addressed to my first name only, Michael, on a street called Wonderland Avenue.

I marveled that the letter had found us because Wonderland Avenue is only the name of our street during our annual holiday celebration. The rest of the year our street goes by its official name, Live Oak Lane. But everyone’s heard of Wonderland Avenue, I reasoned, and the mailman knows where I live.

It was impossible to overlook the envelope, which had a double border of one-penny Christmas stamps all the way around it. I counted them, 50 in all, adding up to the current rate of first-class postage. In multiple postmarks, the stamps were marked from The North Pole, an actual postmark offered by the official North Pole U.S. Postal Office, which is located in Anchorage, Alaska.

I turned it over and looked at the back flap where the return address said only, The West Pole.

What the heck is the West Pole? I wondered as I opened the envelope and removed a beautiful handmade card. The front of the card had a drawing of the earth with the North and South poles both marked. Near the equator on the left side of the earth was another pole sticking out from the surface with a sign that said Merry Christmas from the West Pole!

Then came the kicker—the card was signed at the bottom with four important letters, Nick.

Still standing at my mailbox, I glanced around to see if someone was playing a joke on me. It had been so long since I’d seen Nick that I didn’t want to accept the obvious. The man who rebuilt this old house and my love of Christmas had finally checked in again. I didn’t know where he was, but I knew he was alive.

But why was he sending me a card now? And what is the West Pole? We all know the North and the South poles are the geographic points marking the axis around which the earth rotates. A third pole might make the whole world spin hopelessly out of control.

So I went inside and did a little research, and was surprised to find that the internet has thousands of references to a West Pole. Those include a popular song titled The West Pole by a band called The Gathering, and a Texas Independence Day gathering at a place called The West Pole.

And then I found something called The West Pole Light Show. Located just an hour away from my home, the connection seemed too great to be a coincidence. That had to be it! I’d found Nick, or I guess he’d found me, as it seemed that he’d sent me an invitation to come visit.

In addition to possibly finding Nick, the idea of seeing another neighborhood Christmas celebration had its own appeal, for the magic of Wonderland Avenue had begun to fade. Ever-larger throngs visit our famous Christmas street, often trampling flowerbeds and knocking over mailboxes in the process. When your kids start each