Happy Thanksgiving to all!! This is a story I wrote about years ago. The pecan Santa hangs in a place of honor on my tree.
The old man sat in the old overstuffed chair, sipping his apple cider with brandy, and listening to Jingle Bell Rock playing softly in the background. As he had always done, he had put up his Christmas tree, set out a few of the Dickens village buildings and figurines, and set up the crockpot with apple cider and mulling spices. It was harder now. Since his wife had died, it had taken more energy every year to put up the display she had so loved. But still he set the little skaters on the mirror with the magnets so they appeared to skate over a frozen pond. He arranged the fluffy cotton to simulate snow. He decorated the tree as it had always been decorated, pausing now and then with ornaments to recall where they had been purchased. Always, one or more of the children had arrived with their own children, and a barely controlled chaos had reigned. Real Christmas. But this year, there were no children. The arcs of their lives had led them all in separate directions this year, so there were no small children running around, no boisterous play, no spilled eggnog. They had not meant to leave him alone at this time of year, but had just not coordinated their lives so that someone would be with him.
The little pecan Santa hung on the back of the tree, back where the most bedraggled ornaments, those too unattractive to proudly display, hung in forlorn array. Sure, his felt was pretty dingy, and one eyebrow had long since disappeared in a mass of tissue paper. It probably happened when they quit wrapping him individually, and started just putting him in the bottom of the ornament box with the rest of the unbreakable ornaments. He thought it was miraculous he has retained his hat and beard.
It had not always been this way. He still remembered when he was new. The old man, then a little boy, rushing home from the small kindergarten with his newly made treasure. Starting with a pecan, ordinary enough by itself, he had followed the instructions of the teacher and added pieces she had cut out and brought with her from home. First, there was a white beard, the felt flowing down below the point of the pecan. Then a white mustache shaped like a womans upper lip, then a jaunty white and red hat. The eyes were just Magic Marker. A small loop of fishing line was glued on top behind the hat so that a hook could be used to hang the ornament.
The tree was already up, and the little pecan Santa was soon hung in a prominent place in the front of the tree peering between strands of carefully hung tinsel, surrounded by bubble lights, little horns that actually blew, and tinkling bells. A blinking light nearby made it look like he was winking. It was a grand holiday, with the little boy getting a cowboy outfit with a real cap pistol, the pajamas from his grandmother that came every year, and a toy microscope. The family sat down together on Christmas Eve, the Father wearing his usual red vest that did not quite meet over his middle, and torturing the children by allowing them to open only one present that night after the reading of the Christmas story from his World War II Bible as well as The Night Before Christmas. The children had spent days picking out the one present that could not wait until Christmas morning, feeling the outside of the packages, gently shaking them when not being observed, and trying to divine whether greater time spent in decorating the packages meant a more valuable gift. Father was notorious for spending a lot of time on a package that was a minor gift just to throw them off track.
The tree itself was the usual minor miracle that the boys parents put together. It was always a large tree, reaching nearly to the ceiling, even when they lived in the converted classroom building with 14 foot ceilings. If it did within a foot of the ceiling, Father dismissed it as a table model.
