Dear Santa,

When you come to our house, please bring some cat toys for Mrs. Stein. She is our cat. Her stocking has a pawprint on it and it says �The Cat.� It used to be Mr. Stein�s stocking, but he died and now we�re using it for Mrs. Stein because she didn�t have a stocking. Mrs. Stein likes toys that she can run around and chase and I can throw them at her and she can catch them with her paws.

Love,

AJ

P.S. I want some cars and something for them to drive on. Thanks!

* * * * *

I must confess my own responsibility for the P.S. in AJ�s letter to Santa. I could not restrain my surprise and amusement that he had written a letter to Santa without asking for anything for himself. I�m sure it�s not due to a lack of wishes, just the utter confidence that Santa will bring him the one thing he asked for. He has asked for it over and over again.

AJ has, however, been very concerned about the quality of Mrs. Stein�s Christmas and whether Santa will remember to bring her something. He bought her a present himself (a plastic stocking full of cat toys that she will, in catlike fashion, most likely ignore). When he saw her sleeping in her favorite spot on the tree skirt, he decided he needed to wrap it up right away. After we had wrestled the present into a box and taped some paper on it, he carried it proudly to the tree and carefully placed on the opposite side from where Mrs. Stein was sleeping. He sat and watched for a while. Later he noticed that she had changed position and was now a quarter turn around the tree toward the box. He admonished her with a shaking finger, �No peeking, Mrs. Stein!� and moved the box again.

* * * * *
This Christmas is, for AJ, not about understanding or not understanding, or believing or not believing. It is about utter conviction. Were I a more religious person, this would be a perfect opportunity to go into a lecture on faith. But what strikes me has more to do with AJ�s sense of security � he doesn�t believe in Santa Claus. He knows. I am reasonably certain that at this point if someone were to walk up to him and mean-spiritedly try to convince him that Santa was a myth, AJ would cock his head and raise an eyebrow and ask skeptically, �Are you just kidding?� in the way that he does when we ask him ridiculous questions for fun.

But still, he asks questions to buttress his conviction. �Mommy, on Christmas Eve, after I go to bed, just before it�s time to get up, will I hear a thump on the roof? And then another thump? Because the reindeer are there?� And I begin to wonder how I might create reindeer hoofprints on the roof.

When I was nine and my brother was six, my family moved across the sea to London. We moved in August, but, thanks to a dockworker�s strike, did not receive our belongings until shortly before Christmas, when we moved into our flat opposite Regent�s Park. In November, my brother had developed a lump under his arm. A swollen gland, we thought. But the lump did not go away. It grew. And in the weeks before Christmas, he was shuttled around to doctors as we received our first introduction to the pros and cons of nationalized health care. Although the word cancer was never spoken in our home, at least in my presence, I know now that it was a constant specter. The surgery was scheduled. My brother came home a couple of days before Christmas and we waited for the results. My dad and I had done the decorating while my mom waited anxiously at the strange hospital in a strange country with my brother. When he came home, he was tired and worried and starting to lose the faith. How would Santa find us in a whole new country? How would he get to us, since our new home lacked a chimney? Was he really coming? Was there really any such thing?

And I put on my first Christmas pantomime to entertain him. I told stories of how Santa could shrink and grow at will, how he would slip through the mail slot of our front door, sack and all, and grow large again to stuff the stocking hanging from the mock fireplace in the parlor. We sang songs and told stories. And he was happy and excited once again.

But I had lost my faith. It was my first real awareness of the worries and concerns of the adult world. The stories I told to cheer up my brother were as much for me as for him � I needed convincing that Christmas was still a magical time. I needed magic too.

Shortly after Christmas we got the news that there was nothing wrong with my brother and it was a very happy New Year. But the Christmas pantomime became a tradition in my family. My brother joined in the following year, and holiday guests were frequently pressed into service. I remember one stellar year where we enacted � �Twas the night before Christmas,� with my grandfather, who�d been convinced to wear a Santa hat and his reading glasses, as the narrator. I played the main character in my long Lanz nightgown while my brother, dressed as Santa, appeared with our sheepdog who gamely took part in his own costume � a sign around his neck proclaiming, �I am a reindeer.�

Even when I was in college, the tradition continued. My freshman year roommate, who was from India and, although atheistic herself, grew up in a family that practiced hinduism, was much amused when she joined us for the holiday, and gamely agreed to participate in a parody of that same Christmas poem written to poke fun at my dad�s abiding love for his new car. I seem to remember rhyming �stereo� with �ho ho ho.�

I miss those Christmases terribly. It is probably why Dylan Thomas� �A Child�s Christmas in Wales� makes me cry. But I still read it to AJ every Christmas, even though he doesn�t yet fully understand it. But he likes to hear about the snowballing of the cats and of Mr. Prothero smacking at the smoke with his slipper. And someday I hope that he�ll understand why it�s hard to remember whether is snowed for six days and six nights we he was twelve or twelve days and twelve nights when he was six. But not too soon.

And now I am heading out to find some cars and something for them to drive on. Because even Santa needs a little help.

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