Scary Santa

Published: Monday, December 8, 2008 on the Ohio University Post website
Last Modified: Monday, December 8, 2008, 6:12:55pm

Every year for the holiday season, my family engages in a rigorous act of extreme home makeover, transforming our comfortable house in Bartlett, Ill.,into a haven of Christmas decorations and good cheer. During this process, my absolute favorite decoration surfaces: a photo album chronicling our annual trip to Chicago's Marshal Field's (now Macy's), specifically our visit with the Marshal Field's Santa. While the photographs of latter years are collections of joy, the earlier snapshots-where my siblings and I are in our toddler years-are personifications of agony, despair and fear.

The psychological fears of Santa - the fact that he can see us when we're sleeping, knows when we are awake, has carte blanche to determine whether we are good or not - was subject of several low-budget horror films entitled Silent Night, Deadly Night, where Santa kills naughty children, but that was not the source of our fear, at least not early on. While I like to consider my siblings and I as a modern day incarnation of Salinger's Glass family, it is very unlikely that as diaper-boasting tots we were aware of the implicit stalker status of the jolly head elf.

What did scare us, though, was the man's image. Our faces would twist and turn at the sight, becoming puffy with tears and red with stress as a freakish old man beckoned us to sit on his lap. Seemingly proud of the destruction he was causing, he would laugh maniacally at our terrorized glances. He hides his face behind a bushy white beard and gazes at us with beady old eyes. He is dressed in daunting black boots that thunder on the ground, an extravagant belt buckle that glistens like fool's gold in the light, and his trademark red suit, a horrific exercise in mass weight loss that appears to have sprung out of the seventh ring of hell.

Whatever the rationale, Santa is a seriously scary dude, and my family is not the only one to have experienced his frightening demeanor. Deck the halls with this hearty collection of petrified youths (my personal favorite is number five): http://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/holiday/sfl-scaredofsanta-ugc,0,7181908.ugcphotogallery.