Some tales are better off untold, but I’ll take a chance on this one about my Dancing Santa.
He’s a little over 4 feet tall. When he was new, you could press a button, some music would play, he would say “ho, ho, ho,” and he would do a dance similar to the twist.
At least, that’s what I think I’ve been told by my friend Mike. But by the time he purchased Santa several years ago in a Niles thrift shop, the jolly elf’s twisting days were done. Press the button as often as you like. He won’t move.
There’s a story about how I ended up with Dancing Santa. The short version is that he was a prize for a golf outing Mike organized. After the outing, we all ended up in Mike’s basement, where some frivolity occurred.
One of Mike’s college buddies decided he could make Santa dance. Sure enough, Rob had Santa doing what roughly resembled a jitterbug, followed by a samba, followed by a fox trot and maybe a polka. As an extemporaneous comedy routine, it was unsurpassed.
Everyone laughed until glass started to break. Boom, there went a case filled with Mike’s daughter’s keepsakes. Boom, there went another. And then, total silence as Mike’s wife came downstairs.
Minutes later, for whatever reason, I was sent home with orders that Santa needed to go with me.
It was late and my wife, Judy, was asleep. I decided a good place to store Dancing Santa was in the dark hallway leading from the bedroom to bathroom. That’s where Judy met him, about 6 a.m. She screamed, I explained, eventually we laughed, and Santa found a new home in a corner of a basement storage room.
Every couple years or so, I would bring Santa upstairs. Once, he greeted Judy in the kitchen as she came in for her first cup of coffee. Another time, he lurked outside our living room window, staring in past our Christmas tree. I once had Santa wear a T-shirt that said B&B Stoop Labor, took a picture and texted it Mike, announcing that we’d hired a new intern.
That’s about it. We are not the kind of people to overdo a joke.
But a couple weeks ago, on Christmas Eve, I noticed Santa in the basement, brought him upstairs to the bathroom, raised the toilet lid and had him stand there with his back to the door. This was not what Judy expected to see when she hurried in from the car after her yoga class.
A few hours later, Judy decided it was her turn. She lugged Santa across the lawn to our neighbor Laura’s house and positioned him on the porch so he would be peering through their front window. Then she ran back to our house and joined me to watch “A Christmas Carol” on our TV in the basement.
It didn’t take long for Laura to text us. She and her family had had a big laugh. It revived a good memory for her. She remembered how she had borrowed Dancing Santa from us one Christmas holiday to surprise each of her children as they returned home from college.
So, should she bring Santa back?
Judy replied that it might be fun to put Santa on another neighbor’s porch. That’s why Laura dragged Santa back across the lawn, placed him at the other neighbor’s front door, rang the doorbell and ran like hell.
None of us saw what happened next, but we heard about it. The wife answered the doorbell. It was very dark outside her door, and she saw a creepy, white-bearded 4-foot whatever-it-was, and let out a shriek. The husband ran for his gun, threw open the door and, for a fleeting moment, considered putting a bullet between Dancing Santa’s eyes.
Evidently, there was nothing funny about this. The husband was still angry the next day when Judy retrieved Dancing Santa, who is lying low in our basement until it’s safe to come out again.
I’m not big on lessons. I know I want no part of a haunted house. I can’t stand on a mountaintop and look over a ledge to enjoy the beautiful scenery below. Don’t come near me with a snake.
But after hiding once under a blanket when a bat was flying around our bedroom light, I realize there are some smaller dangers we all just need to face.
For the neighbor’s and Dancing Santa’s sake, he may need to go back to that front door again next winter. If it helps, he could be dressed in combat gear.