Christmas Time is Constipated Santa Time

Here are some things people tell me they think of when they think of Christmas: Jesus, Santa, family, snow, presents, fruitcake, egg nog (and various other nogs), Christmas trees, and people who use strings of lights to outline their houses. In years past, I've added: cutting yourself on the Christmas tree stand, surly mall elves, and Constipated Santa.

Constipated Santa is an ornament that adorns my mother's Christmas tree. His molded plastic form puts him in a crouch, as if he is jumping down a chimney or perhaps doing some sort of angry Rumplestiltskin dance. His face is contorted into a grimace, suggesting that he is concentrating on doing something difficult. Assimilating his strained expression and his pose, we gave him his name. He's been a holiday classic ever since.

Constipated Santa was never attractive. His nose is round and gnarled like that of a Bronx street fighter. His cheeks are puffed, but not with glee; it looks as if he is chewing on something lumpy and distasteful. He's not fat, just out of shape. His beard does not include a mustache, so on top of all of this, he looks somewhat Amish.

Then, starting perhaps ten years ago, Constipated Santa began falling victim to animal attacks. Our dogs and cats, apparently finding Constipated Santa to be as vaguely troubling as we did, would tear him from the tree each year and maul him. Hours later, we would stumble upon his decimated form in a corner somewhere, clinging to life. At first, they tore his clothes. His red suit was shredded so that his gut hung out. He beard was pulled askew. Then, the animals moved their efforts north. Constipated Santa's hat, which is actually a felt-covered plastic extension of his head, was denuded and so became a flesh-colored, wormlike growth feeding on his skull.

When I went away to college, the attacks intensified. Constipated Santa lost first a foot (he now ho-ho-hos down the chimney on a stump) and later, a hand. Then, just a few years ago, my mother sent me the following e-mail bulletin:

Dateline: Grosse Ile, Michigan - CONSTIPATED SANTA HAS LOST HIS FACE.

As sad as it was, the bulletin was true. It turns out that Constipated Santa's face was a separate piece of plastic, apparently glued to the front of his head before he left the factory. Our dogs had known this. His faceless, handless, stump-toting carcass was returned to the tree while my mother searched for his countenance. She eventually found it under the couch and later sent me:

Newsbreak - CONSTIPATED SANTA'S FACE RE-ATTACHED IN MARATHON SURGERY.

My wife Robin and I went home for Christmas this year and helped to decorate the tree. I showed her Constipated Santa, his face askew over a glue-filled gap. I told Mom that I wanted Constipated Santa passed down to me as a family heirloom for future generations to enjoy and mutilate. Robin shook her head behind my back. I hung Constipated Santa on the family tree in the place of honor, front and center.

The person who most shares my respect and admiration for Constipated Santa is my stepbrother Jason. We have a verbal agreement to alternate custody when he becomes second-generation property.

There is only one Christmas in recent memory when I did not see Constipated Santa. Jason was with me, so we were able to console each other by remembering C.S. and thinking of what a joyous Christmas he must be having in the box in the basement. At the time, we were doing our best to infiltrate the Eurotrash by jetting off to visit and travel with our sister Jaime, who was spending the year abroad. We went to Germany and France and Italy, and then decided that there would be no more decadent way to spend Christmas itself than to go skiing in the Swiss Alps.

After our day on the slopes, we returned to our hostel: Balmer's Herberge, a rather American oasis in the middle of Europe. The evening wore on, not feeling all that Christmasy, until we finally retired to our room - Jaime and I laying across two bottom bunks and Jason on the one above us.

We wondered why it didn't feel like Christmas.

"Remember how Dad always played Johnny Mathis and I hated it?" Jaime asked the upper bunk.

Jason uttered some sort of squeak from above.

"Jason?"

"Yeah?"

"Remember dad's Johnny Mathis tapes?"

There was another squeak. "I'm listening to one right now," he said, and sure enough, when we strained to listen, we could hear a low, tinny Mathis coming from his headphones.

She turned to me. "I hate Johnny Mathis!" she hissed.

"Yeah," I told her.

Jason squeaked again.

Jaime looked back up, at the bottom of Jason's bunk. "What are you doing up there?"

"Writing my name on the ceiling," he said. We looked around and saw that this was common. At Balmer's, you don't sign the guestbook. You sign the walls.

"Oh." She then muttered, half asleep, Then: "It doesn't feel like Christmas over here."

I didn't respond right away because I was thinking of the Sylvester we had seen that day. Sylvester is the European anti-Santa who wears a black suit, a black beard, and blackface. He reputedly visits bad children on Christmas morning and hits them with small sticks.

"It is different," I agreed.

"As much as I hate Johnny Mathis, I almost miss him," she said.

Then, a Christmas miracle occurred - not unlike the birth of Jesus or the many holiday adventures of Charlie Brown. Much to our wondering eyes did appear a magical roll of toilet paper, floating near the bottom of the upper bunk, its loose end dangling like a streamer. And from the toilet paper came the unmistakable sound of Johnny Mathis singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

We watched as the floating roll descended, angelic, and then stopped to hover halfway between the bunks. On closer inspection, we saw that it was dangling from wires. The wires to Jason's headphones, to be precise.

Jaime said, "You put your headphones in your toilet paper?"

From above: "Makes it echo more."

We lay there for a while, the noise in adjacent rooms disappearing into the soothing, syrupy voice of Johnny Mathis. And Jason was right - it did echo more, our own little private broadcast. We lay still, and we listened to the magical singing toilet paper, and we noticed something: it felt like Christmas.

We awoke refreshed the next morning. We would go home, and we would see Constipated Santa with his broken face and amputated leg. We would see friends and family and we would exchange presents. We would remember our Swiss Christmas, and for its part, Switzerland would also remember us. We knew this when we noticed, amidst the simple scrawlings on our room's walls and ceiling, JASON STEGER written out in foot-high letters.

We thought of a Christmas song that wasn't quite a Christmas carol, a song that said that although Frosty the Snowman was made of snow, the children knew how he came to life one day. We knew, too. Though it was made of recycled wood fibers, we knew how on our Christmas away from home, Jason's toilet paper had sung "A Marshmallow World" while it hovered in air that was still redolent of marker fumes.

We learned two valuable lessons of the holiday season that year: For one, the holidays are not about presents or ceremony, or even about family. They are about disgusting tree ornaments that may or may not appear Amish. And secondly - poignantly - putting your headphones in toilet paper makes it echo more.