Santa Lives!

Holidailies offers a prompt today, asking for new iconic figures for the holidays if one is tired of Santa.

I won't go all Yes, Virginia on my readers, but I have a button that reads SANTA LIVES! And he does. He's peeking over my monitor at me right now. That is the very wee Santa finger puppet who lives in my office, along with Capt. Jack Sparrow, Buddha, Cobra Bubbles (from Lilo & Stitch), and Ned Flanders (a burger toy). Ned has since departed this mortal coil, actually. And somewhere around here is a felted lab mouse with a very pink tail. There are other toys too: the Night Bus from Harry Potter, done in Lego; a handful of "intelligent" toys for executives and a handheld Yahtzee game. But my favorites are the little people who work with me.

I shall never tire of characters. In the same way that I wrote about the stories earlier this week, I feel as passionately about characters. Natalie Goldberg, a guru of mine, poses a writing task for practice: Describe everything about a person that you can in one sentence.

Today, on my walk with my dog, I saw a man in a brown coat, tennis shoes and a black hat, carrying the newspaper still in its plastic bag while he walked two small dirty white dogs who seemed very excited to be going anywhere.

As I was musing, my dog sniffed the air, trying to see what they were up to, but they were too far away. I imagined little story capsules for this man and his dogs...

A woman was waiting for him inside the house, a bit impatiently because she wanted to drink her coffee and read the paper but he insisted on walking the dogs before he brought it in. She thought that her coffee might get too cold, and it would all be ruined unless he came in before three minutes had passed.

***

The man, whose name is Sidney, lost his wife a year ago, and he really only enjoys the Sunday morning walk with the dogs. The rest of Sunday is one long lonely time, punctuated by phone calls from his daughters who both live far away now.

***

The dogs were rescued from his neighbor's house last week where there had been a fire. The owners were still in the hospital, and the man was beginning to enjoy walking them. Even after the neighbors came home, he planned to walk their dogs. Or maybe get his own dog.

***

Etc. No, I can never get tired of Santa. Whether he's a jolly old elf, a bad enabler for wanton consumerism, a corruption of "the reason for the season," or a magical realism coyote trickster who brings coal, switches or Barbies, Santa is a perfectly good icon and I'll keep him, thank you.

Besides, he really likes the cookies and brandy I set out for him every year.