Why I Believe In Santa Claus

by Randy Gresham

Growing up in the nouveaux suburbs of Atlanta, the big event each year was the subdivision holiday decoration contest. In these neat-as-a-pin enclaves of comfortable stretch-ranch brick dwellings, the contest represented the very essence of the suburban Christmas Season. In our neighborhood, family status during the following year could very well depend on its placement in these Yuletide competitions.

Each year, shortly after Thanksgiving, members of the neighborhood would begin to cover their doors, awnings, or boxwood hedges with all manner of clever and original designs. Generally restrained, the designs could wax elaborate, such as the neighbor’s door that sported the stuffed reindeer head.

My family nearly burst with pride the year we won first place for our “Around the World in Eighty Days” door design, which included a mechanical moving balloon and basket, which was my father’s creation. Dad was an aeronautical engineer. It had precious little to do with Christmas, but wowed as a composition. Years of increasingly elaborate flash in this halcyon 1950’s decade had established that it was dazzle that counted, not the theme. It astonished, not for its level of taste, but with his boldness of vision.

This aesthetic one-upmanship had grown out of the spirit of the times in a region of the country that until the Second World War was on an economic par with a third world nation. It had only begun to recover from the devastation of Reconstruction under President Franklin Roosevelt. It had gained financial security only as a result of, and during and in the wake of, the war. The first middle class southern generation enjoyed its advantages to the hilt. For a radius of about two miles from where I lived, the socioeconomics were about the same. For the arrived, conformity was valued above all other things. It insured that children would play and attend school with peers, that values would be held in common, that adults would encounter no surprises on their excursions to the shopping malls and that every family would have a chance to win the Christmas decoration contest each year.

My neighborhood had grown up around the remains of an old antebellum big house, one that, when built, had been miles out from the township of Atlanta. It sat on acreage three times the size of our yard. Though never occupied during my earliest years, it still belonged to its original owners, the Hightower family, cousins of the family who had given Stone Mountain to the State of Georgia, and textile millionaires. All was fine in our bland little community until one a branch of that old family reclaimed and moved into its abandoned estate. They were a very different type of family from those all of us were used to.

The Hightower children attended public school with the rest of us, but even so, from the beginning, it was obvious there was a mystique surrounding them. Classmates deferred to them, and teachers handled them with kid gloves. It had something to do with the fact that their grandfather was reputed to be a wizard of some kind, and even wore a robe and a pointed hat if as proof. Though we other children didn’t quite understand the significance of all this, we knew that it was something that carried some weight and we would do well to steer away from such subjects. When my mother mentioned their Old South tradition, she did it in a whisper and even then my father would shush her.

This celebrity family got into the Christmas spirit in a hurry when the season rolled around. They placed in their yard the first year a full-sized sled pulled by twelve mannequin reindeer and Rudolph, with a dummy Santa Claus within, as well as light-up choir boys and candles. Lights were strung not only in their hedges, but also completely around the columns, the house and every window, which were also replete with light-up candles. Some questioned the excess, but in an attempt to be neighborly, awarded the prize to the new family for their efforts.

Encouraged by their success, the following year they added four feet tall elves, a life-sized manger scene, more candles and yet more lights. The Hightowers become more active in the community during the year as well. People, hearing about them and their Christmas display, began driving by in cars to take in the sight. Soon, word had spread throughout the county.

The next year, a ten foot mechanical Santa Claus with booming laugh was added, along with new characters on the roof, verandah and in the yard. We, who lived a full four blocks from the Hightowers, could hear the guffaws of Giant Old Saint Nick until well into the small hours of the morning. The traffic, which had begun to back up the year before, now was completely bottlenecked between the hours of seven o’clock in the evening and one in the morning. Families wanting to return from season festivities of their own, might be caught up in this worse-than-rush-hour traffic for hours. The neighborhood association had to form a special squad to pick up litter that was strewn from the literally thousands of automobiles that were now jamming the streets to get a glimpse of Hightower’s folly. Calls to officials did no good, because everyone was terrified of the well-connected grandfather.

The next year was even worse. There were more characters, a carousel, and a twenty-foot neon cross. Traffic was worse, despair greater. Members of the neighborhood were beginning to wonder if they shouldn’t think about selling their houses in order to avoid the end of the year torment that had become a fact of life. People began praying for a miracle.

A miracle did occur. On Christmas Eve, there were snow flurries, something that never occurs in Atlanta at that time of the year. The Hightower place looked like an amusement park. The Santa Claus was louder than ever. The neighborhood had reached its limits. Suddenly, the neon cross in the yard shorted and caught fire. In the yard of a family who had caused hundreds of crosses to be burned in the yards of others, a giant cross was burning. A spark leaped from the cross and caught the cotton beard of one of the elves on fire, which in turn caught yet another figurine on fire. Before too long all of the figures in the yard, placed far too close together for safety’s sake, were on fire, along with those on the roof and elsewhere. It began snowing harder. The terrified occupants of the house came running out through their flaming fairgrounds, knocking into and tripping one another like Confederate soldiers fleeing the burning of Atlanta. Panicking motorist abandoned their cars. Fire trucks were blocked by all the abandoned cars. Pandemonium broke out everywhere.

Suddenly, at midnight, there was a huge explosion. The sled containing the original Santa Claus, along with the reindeer were hurled up into the air and far down the street. Packages spilled out into the awe-struck crowd. People pointed and gasped.

The snow changed to rain and the fire was extinguished. All that remained was a bunch of smoldering and melted Christmas figurines and candles. The giant Santa Claus’s laugh died out. It was over.

The Hightowers moved from the charred ruins of their house to another part of the county. I understand they never put on such a production for Christmas again. The next year, however, the rumor spread that they had contributed money to both the Foundation for the carving of the Confederate Memorial at Stone Fountain and to an amusement park to be located there. The unflappable Hightowers continued in their Old South tradition, and, like the South itself, would rise again.