Santa paper.

Every year since the beginning of time, Santa Claus has been a big deal in the Smith house. As soon as the news told us they’d spotted him in the US, we had to go to bed. We’d leave cookies and milk, write him letters with last-minute requests, and try to fall asleep as fast as we could. When we woke up, there would be a whole set of presents that hadn’t been under the tree the night before. These were special gifts. Santa gifts. Wrapped in special Santa paper. Every year Santa had new paper, with his face printed all over it in various colors or patterns. It never occurred to me that maybe Santa was a little self-absorbed. I remember very vividly the day I learned there was no Santa. I was probably 7 or 8. I had my suspicions, of course… my school was full of the hoodlums who like to ruin things for everyone else. But somewhere inside, I still had hope. We were at my Aunt Susan’s house a couple of weeks before Christmas. I was walking down the hall, and I heard my mom and Uncle Charles talking about Santa. I stopped to listen, and then she said it. “I still need to buy this year’s Santa paper.” What? MOM buys the Santa paper? How could that be? My suspicions had been confirmed. My parents had been lying to me. I needed to confront this issue right away. I threw open the door and stormed in, pointing at my mom. “I KNEW IT!” She calmed me down, apologized for lying, and asked me to keep quiet so Chelsea could enjoy the Santa lies a little while longer. I agreed. I don’t think I was too crushed by the idea that Santa didn’t exist, but a lot of the magic of the Santa paper was lost. Santa paper, by the way, still exists. 25-year-old Brandi wakes up to new gifts in special paper with tags from Santa, just like 7-year-old Brandi did. Only these days, we shop for the Santa paper together. (With my mom, not Santa. He doesn’t exist, remember?) There is a long and laborious process that goes into determining which gifts are deemed Santa gifts, one that has been perfected over the years and only makes sense in the mind of my mother. Despite the trauma it caused me 20 years ago, Santa paper is special.