Rising from the Dead

Rising from the Dead

Near the house where I grew up, there stood a big Victorian house. It was at the intersection of two main streets. I remember a front lawn and a hedge lining a sort of crescent shaped driveway. There were big steps leading to a big porch on the front of the house. Each year, the man of the house, an older man who had grown up right there, I’m told, would put on a Santa suit and come out onto the porch roof and wave and throw candy for neighborhood kids. The guy was just the right build, short and kind of stocky, and he did a great job with the kids.

However, it seems there were other forces at work one year. Our Santa had another passion: he liked to drink… alcohol… a lot. One year, he had a few before he came out as Santa, and the next thing you know, he managed to fall off of the roof in front of the neighborhood kids. There was a lot of gasping, laughing, and a great sadness as many believed they had witnessed the demise of Santa.

But this goes deeper. This house was on a big piece of property. The guy was older and out of shape, so he took care of some of it, but left the rest to grow over. There was also a little used shed in the overgrowth. Part of the grown-over part abutted a big, local ballpark. The kids from the local grammar school would cross the street in nice weather and have recess in that park.

One day, long ago, when I myself was one of those kids recessing in the park, word spread like wildfire that someone had found a dead body in the “woods” next to the park. Well, being curious, there was a stampede toward that spot. Sure enough, there it was: the body of a man–older, short, and bald–lying motionless on the ground at the entrance to the shed. Before the recess teachers got the chance to stop anybody (it happened that fast), there was a big herd of grade school kids in kind of a semicircle around the dead man.

We heard a door open and looked at the house. A small, older lady had just come out and started in our direction. The crowd parted as she passed through. She bent over the body and whispered and pushed and shook it for a couple of minutes. Then, before our very eyes, the dead man sat up. The Mrs. helped him to his feet. After that, she yelled at all of us for being there and they started for the house. Then the teachers arrived, and just like that… it was over.

Or, so it seemed.

But wait! What if one of the school kids was sharp enough to see the similarities between the dead man and Santa? Word could have spread. We all could have experienced a premature abandonment of that childhood Santa thing. Our lives could have been destroyed.