The Santa letdown

I grew up celebrating christmas hispanic style; staying up until midnight to open gifts. From my understanding, that's when Santa was supposed to show up, as the story goes. As the only young child for a good nine years within my greater family unit (uncles, aunts, etc) I was the butt of many practical jokes and never really believed anything anyone tried to tell me. This, coupled with my natural logical-ness made it pretty clear to me the entire thing was just silly and my Mom was just trying to do the whole christmas thing. I really didn't "get" it, just like God and Jesus when I was in Catholic school. I never really thought they where talking to ME, no no, I'm just some kid, I don't know anything about that.

I remember when I told my mom that I knew, as a single-digit aged child usually does in such a smug manner. We just got off the 5 freeway in Burbank, headed to our apartment at which point she said that if I didn't believe I wouldn't get gifts. Outraged!

I still got gifts, of course, but I was all mad and thinking I was all clever, even when she made me go to my room 10 minutes before midnight so Santa could leave his shit and leave. "Grr," I'm sure to have said.

All of her gifts to me since then have been from Santa too.

Jam it back in, in the dark.