Reply #20: My Santa Story

[markus]

This is what I told my (now 11 year old) daughter when she was about nine, and what I expect to be telling my eight year old son.

The main character in this story, Rugby Tiger, is comfortably placed on my daughter's bed right now. It is a true story. I think it meant a lot to my kids, but would probably lose something in the transfer to another family.

Why Daddy Believes in Santa Claus

Once there was a little girl named Killian who saw a television show about magical toys that came alive when left alone. She would watch the tape of that show over and over again. The character she loved the most was Rugby the Tiger.

When Christmas came along, at the top of her letter to Santa, she asked for her very own Rugby tiger. This didn't bother her mother and father, since the show was a Muppets show, and surely somewhere someone had made a Rugby Tiger stuffed animal.

But alas, no one anywhere had ever heard of Rugby Tiger or the show.

Her parents looked everywhere in the smallish town where they lived. They looked in the next biggest town. They looked in Minneapolis. They looked on the Internet. They searched for Mupput and Toy and Rugby. They called the big toy stores to see if anyone had every made a Rugby tiger. They dug tourgh piles of stuffed animals for weeks on end, and could not find a stuffed tiger that looked like Rugby.

They were crushed. Their four year old daughter (and their first child), who believed in Santa Claus with all her heart, would not get the toy of her dreams. This would be the saddest Xmas either of them could imagine.

One day, about a week before Xmas, the girls father went into the drugstore in town. In the middle was a table of stuffed animals he'd searched a half-dozen times before.

This week, a new shipment of stuffed animals had arrived. Sitting just off to one side, with his head sticking clearly out of the pile, was a stuffed tiger that was the very, spitting image of the Rugby Tiger character in the show.

And so Killian got her Xmas wish against all odds and beyond all hope. And that is why your Dad belives in Santa Claus. Someone put the toy that could not be found there, just for you.

So deep in my heart, I believe in Santa Claus. And if you never forget that miracles can happen and wishes can come true, then you can always believe in Santa Claus.


P.S.-- I have to leave my office now for a bit, or somebody's going to walk up and wonder who died in my family, since 46 year old men are supposed to cry over stories like this.