While sipping hot chocolate in the Bixby Chocolate Café in Waterville — with its magnificent towering windows overlooking Santa’s visiting hut — I viewed a tiny rebellion.

A little boy was running around the surrounding shrubbery, shouting, “No, no, no!” as his mother chased him.

Apparently, the tearful boy seemed too frightened to enter the hut and sit on Santa’s lap.

I got it at once. I remember being frightened by the old, white-bearded man in Santa-land at the Famous and Barr Department Store in St. Louis. I didn’t run, lest I would’ve had to take the streetcar home alone.

My sister Rita had taken me to see Santa, who, I learned years later, was a guy she had been dating.

Santa (I suppose, in a scripted line) reminded me what I wanted for Christmas. I don’t remember what I answered, but his elf assistant pulled a gift from a big, green bag and handed it to me, as Rita pulled me away.

I can tell you that it was a girl’s nurse kit complete with a big, black stethoscope. Apparently, they thought I was a girl. Rita was not amused.

I remembered that gift this week, when our Santa was pictured in this paper, slumped back on his throne, as he was being given an exam by a nurse holding a big, black stethoscope to his red chest.

I was not amused.

But happily, it did provide me a column.

At Christmas, I always enjoy digging up a Santa story. Most of the time I repeat the same story, but occasionally one of the newer “old” ones awakens me at dawn.

During World War II, with all the boys overseas, the local taverns each had their own truly aging Santa. And after supper on the weeks before the big night, the local kids of each tavern’s neighborhood were trooped in to sit on Santa’s lap.

On this rare special occasion, mothers and grandmothers were permitted to attend. I clearly remember my mother’s white wool gloves on my shoulders.

On one of those Holy Eves the chosen Santa, drawn from the firehouse across from Skeeter’s Tavern, wearing the hand-me-down ratty beard, would hear our gift requests, painfully watching his brother firemen sitting at the bar, draining mugs of foamy Christmas cheer he had enjoyed earlier.

Santa, it seems, actually fell asleep between lap-sitters, and had to be poked awake each time by an older guest.

I remember my mother and friends giggling at each poke.

Glued to the picture of the nurse attending to Santa, with the memory of me on my Santa, this scary idea formed on my mind. Surely, among all the trillions of Santas and their thrones and big, fat laps in years past, there had to be … HEALTH INSURANCE!

Imagine mothers and fathers, elf assistants and store managers, gently removing their kinder from his lap with assurances, “Santa’s gone to sleep, darlings. He’s been working so hard.”

Yes, he had. But President Biden went to Congress and talked them into a special new deal for Santas all over the world.

Well, it’s best to soften the news early, lest they spend the rest of the lives on a couch.

Let’s face it: even Santa needs health insurance.

And the reindeer? Let’s talk about that tomorrow.

Turn the tree lights on.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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