Santa's Great Escape by Norma Gardner

The tree twinkles, the mantel sits proudly adorned, the cookies tease our tastebuds, and the brightly wrapped gifts fill us with anticipation. Exit to the other side of the doorknob for an entirely different experience. Every year, my husband painstakingly and persistently attempts to make the outside of the house look as festive as the inside, primarily to rebut our daughter's critical assessment that “our house is boring.”

Our neighbours hang garland that surprisingly stays in place. Their inflatable Santas, elves, reindeer and all manner of characters, obediently stay put on their front lawns. By some freak of nature, their beautiful urn planters lit with lush greenery, stand upright and at attention on either side of their garage doors, through fierce Northern Ontario winds.

While we attempt all of the above and more, our decorations seem to have a rebellious streak and an inherent tendency to fall off, tip over and literally attempt to escape when they think we aren't watching. And while our neighbours enjoy the same snowfall accumulation as we do in December, their lawn ornaments don't get swallowed up into the white abyss. Ours however, seem to disappear, only to be seen again after the spring thaw.

One fall, thinking we were quite clever, we removed the dead annuals from our black plastic urn planters but left the earth so that we could sink little potted self-lit trees into them at Christmas. Our hope was that the weight of the earth would keep the urns in place, after learning the previous year, that small plastic pots containing little bargain trees were too easy a target for the north winds or likely any winds.

Our hopes were dashed when we came home one night, only to find the plastic urns tipped over and unearthed. Even tying the trees themselves to the drain pipe didn't work. This only resulted in the tree still connected to the pipe and dangling in mid-air while the plastic urn rolled down the driveway, a trail of mud in its wake.

Then there were the Santa episodes. My husband purchased a three-foot plastic light up Santa, at a much-discounted price. He was an odd orange colour but was a great bargain and had one hand raised in welcome, which we thought would look very inviting by our front door. We were correct, except that every time the wind blew him over, which was almost a daily occurrence, the light bulb broke.

Many light bulbs later, we decided it would be best to securely tie him to the trunk of the maple tree in our front yard. As we normally had very white Christmases, the success of this strategy was short lived. My very patient and persistent husband dug Santa out after every snowfall before Christmas, after which time we all stopped caring and watched as he got swallowed up bit by bit by the snow until his little mitten clad hand was waving no more. Santa, that is, not my husband.

The following winter we retired plastic Santa and graduated to inflatable Santa. We had high hopes for this Santa. We were convinced that he could single-handedly elevate our house from boring to at least acceptable, in our daughter’s eyes. Apparently, all we had to do was place him on the lawn, hook him up to the Christmas lights, turn on the outdoor lights and lo and behold, instant Santa.

My husband even purchased a red floodlight to shine on our new addition, making Santa the star attraction in our simple display. We watched with great anticipation from the front window as, with the mere flick of a switch, Santa unfolded himself and stood at attention. This excitement quickly turned to dismay when we looked out one night to see Santa tilted to one side, at about a 45-degree angle from the ground. 

He looked as if he was either half asleep or fully intoxicated. Once again, my very patient husband ventured into the snow laden front yard to attempt a course correction. No amount of repositioning, packing snow around Santa’s feet, readjusting ground stakes or batting him back and forth in the head, a last resort after nights of many non-violent attempts, seemed to help. I worried that our neighbours with young children might report us.

Our next and final attempt was to tie Santa by his neck to the drain pipe beside the garage door. We optimistically thought that anchoring him close to the side of the house would offer protection from the winds. We left him unsupervised one night and returned home to find him still inflated, still somewhat tied to the drain pipe, but attempting to escape down the side of the house. He was actually showing us his back. This was probably payback for the head slapping incident.

Both Santas are now retired, the little pre lit trees are no more and the plastic urns are content to do summer duty, spending their winters in our storage shed where they steer completely free of trouble. The only outdoor decorations consist of a simple string of lights, a lovely wreath that is well secured to the door with a proper wreath hanger, and some bright red shiny shatterproof, weatherproof ornaments hanging from the bare branches of our maple tree.

The floodlight remains and shines onto an undecorated front lawn as a gentle reminder of our futile attempts, lest we get any grand ideas. The lack of entertainment is likely disappointing for our neighbours, I'm sure our friends miss the stories of our defiant decorations, and our daughter reminds us that her assessment is correct, but sometimes less is better, and boring is ok.

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Norma Gardner retired from the corporate world a few years ago. Her longtime side gig as a seamstress,  is now mostly limited to taking requests for superhero capes and the like, from her grandchildren. She is content to spend time with family and friends, travel and practice perfecting her sourdough recipes and her writing. 

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