Not everyone looks forward to seeing _____

by Kate Kellaway (adapted version)
The Guardian Unlimited
Sunday, December 5, 1999

I asked my godson if he was looking forward to Christmas. Was he expecting a visit from _____? His mother, my Friend, looked to me strangely. "Don't mention _________________", she muttered. "He's terrified that he may be coming down the chimney".

My godson is afraid that _________________ is on his way down the chimney to "catch" him. Reluctantly -I prefer to think of _____ as benign- I can see the force of such fears. _____ is like a two-in-one picture. _____ the magical can become, in a trice, _____ the Sinister. _____ is, after all, a housebreaker. He is a burglar in reverse (at least he brings in the goods). He also has some logistical problems like making his way down chimneys which are too small for the human frame. Also my son used to fret about whether our roof would bear the weight of his reindeer.

_____ is a stranger. Who is he really? He hangs out in department stores, mysteriously never looking quite the same. Sometimes he is stout, sometimes emaciated (is he perhaps bulimic?). Only his scarlet uniform stays constant.

Children have it drilled into them not to accept sweets from strangers. It seems creepily inconsistent that they are also encouraged to accept sweets and gifts from a strange old man. And what gives _____ the right to demand such intimacy? He invites even shy and unwilling little ones to sit on his knee, close enough to smell his breath (it tends to be bad. It's the arctic diet).

Look carefully at _____. Invisibility is his thing. Even when you meet him, you can't see his face. It is under a hood, behind a beard. Why is he so elusive? Why does he only materialise in commercial settings?

There is something unsettling too, about the fact that it is only parents who seem to be authorities on _____. They know how he will behave and when he will come, but they seem to be keeping some vital information under their hoods. It is as if they knew something about _____ that was too dreadful to pass on.