The Great Santa Search (Christmas Chronicles) Read online

  THE GREAT SANTA SEARCH

  ALSO BY JEFF GUINN

  OTHER BOOKS IN THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES SERIES

  The Autobiography of Santa Claus

  How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas

  The Sixteenth Minute: Life in the Aftermath of Fame

  (coauthored with Douglas Perry)

  Our Land Before We Die: The Proud Story

  of the Seminole Negro

  You Can’t Hit the Ball With the Bat on Your Shoulder:

  The Baseball Life and Times of Bobby Bragan

  Sometimes a Fantasy: Midlife Misadventures

  with Baseball Heroes

  The Dallas Cowboys: Our Story

  When Panthers Roared: The Fort Worth Cats

  and Minor League Baseball

  THE GREAT SANTA SEARCH

  as told toJEFF GUINN

  by Santa Claus himself

  ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK HOFFER

  JEREMY P. TARCHER / PENGUIN

  a member of Penguin Group USA, Inc.

  New York

  JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Copyright © 2006 by 24Words, LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada.

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  The Library of Congress catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

  Guinn, Jeff.

  The great Santa search / as told to Jeff Guinn.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1607-1

  1. Santa Claus—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3557.U375G74 2006 2006046365

  813'.54—dc22

  ILLUSTRATIONS © 2006 BY MARK HOFFER

  The recipe in this book is to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for specific health or allergy concerns that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipe in this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For Felix Higgins

  Lunch is on me.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Hot Chocolate Cake

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  YOU DON’T LIVE as long as I have—more than seventeen hundred years so far, and counting—without becoming something of a philosopher. After all the things I’ve seen and the people I’ve met, I’ve concluded it’s true that most problems are really opportunities. Everyone’s life includes moments of crisis when everything seems to be going wrong, and we feel discouraged or even helpless. But if we are determined enough, we can find ways to make the best of these situations, and afterward find ourselves happier than we were before. The story I’m about to tell is proof.

  Let me set the scene.

  Sometimes, during the few quiet moments we have at the North Pole, I reflect on how lucky I’ve been. Of course, my greatest privilege has been to help so many children all around the world celebrate Christmas, and the other holidays of St. Nicholas Day and Epiphany. The presents that they’ve received from me and my wonderful friends have always been intended as symbols of caring, a sign that on the most special of holidays someone loved them enough to leave a gift, just as on that happiest of days some two thousand years ago God demonstrated his love for us all with the gift of his son Jesus. I have never meant for my mission to divert attention in any way from that. As Santa Claus, I want to contribute to the celebration without being mistaken for the cause of it.

  This is what I have tried to do for many centuries, and I hope I’ve mostly been successful, though I’m aware that there have always been and will always be those who twist the traditions of Christmas to suit their own selfish purposes. Part of my good fortune is that I’ve encountered so few of them. Instead, I’ve known many fine people whose actions were sparked by generosity of spirit, and some of them live and work with me now at the North Pole. You’ve heard of several: Benjamin Franklin, Amelia Earhart, St. Francis of Assisi, Leonardo da Vinci, Attila the Hun, and Theodore Roosevelt. There are others who should be better known than they are: Sarah Kemble Knight, who wrote the first books about traveling in colonial America, and Bill Pickett, the great African-American cowboy. One has a colorful reputation that has very little to do with the actual facts—King Arthur, who was really a British war chief rather than a crowned head of state. Then there are three dear people whom popular history has never noted at all, because they have never sought the fame they so richly deserve—Willie Skokan, the fine Bohemian craftsman; Felix, the former Roman slave who became my first companion in this gift-giving mission; and Layla, my beloved wife, whose courage and common sense have meant so much to all of us for so very long.

  You may be wondering what all this has to do with problems actually being opportunities. Well, in 1841 an acquaintance of mine had an idea that eventually threatened to ruin Santa Claus and the spirit of Christmas altogether. His name was J. W. Parkinson, and he owned a dry-good
s store in Philadelphia. Though the story I want to tell is concerned with what happened more than 160 years later, we can trace everything back to J.W.’s plan to drum up a little extra holiday business at his shop. He had no inkling, and would never have believed, that because of his marketing brainstorm the entire nature of Christmas celebrations throughout America would eventually change forever, and that the generous spirit of the holiday and reputation of Santa Claus would one day hang in the balance. Everything I’ve tried to represent came very close to being destroyed forever.

  But it wasn’t. In the end, some wonderful people refused to let this happen. In the process, they taught me that “Santa’s helpers” are even more numerous than I had realized, and reminded me that the only time it’s certain there can’t be a happy ending is if we give up trying to make one happen.

  I hope you enjoy the story, and learn from it, too. No one, including me, is ever too old to learn.

  —Santa Claus

  The North Pole

  THE GREAT SANTA SEARCH

  He only managed to lower himself as far as his waist before getting stuck tight. Standing beside me, Layla and Sarah dissolved into helpless giggling; Felix and Ben chuckled, too, but I felt sorry for the fellow. I’d gotten stuck in a few chimneys myself over the years.

  CHAPTER

  One

  I don’t see why you won’t agree, Santa Claus,” said J. W. Parkinson, pacing in front of the stone fireplace in the living room of his home. “It would be great fun for you, and extra holiday profit for me. We’d both be benefiting.”

  “That’s just it, my friend,” I replied, taking another sip of the delicious hot chocolate he’d just served. “I would enjoy myself, and your general store would sell extra toys. But what about the other merchants in Philadelphia who have toys for sale? Wouldn’t they feel you had an unfair advantage because Santa Claus invited children to meet him at J. W. Parkinson’s? I know you’ve promised to use some of the additional income to buy gifts for needy children, but I still can’t do it. I love and treat everyone equally, you see. In anything regarding Christmas, I can’t favor you over your competitors. I suppose the best way to put it is that Santa Claus doesn’t endorse any store or product, and never will.”

  J.W., a slender middle-aged man with so much nervous energy that he twitched even while sitting down, wasn’t willing to accept my decision. Born to a poor German immigrant family shortly after the so-called Revolutionary War freed the American colonies from England, he’d worked hard to earn enough money to open his own store that sold what we then called “dry goods”—mostly clothing, tools, and toys. Once he had his shop, he labored tirelessly to make it successful. J.W. sold products of good quality at reasonable prices and made a point of memorizing all his customers’ names so they could be greeted warmly whenever they came in. I’d made his acquaintance when I learned that each Christmas Eve he would personally take sacks of toys and candy into the poorest neighborhoods of Philadelphia, distributing gifts to those children who never dared hope they might celebrate the holiday with presents. Of course, my companions and I had the same mission, and on a worldwide scale, but we always realized we could never brighten the Christmas of every deserving child and so welcomed those kind souls like J.W. who didn’t simply sit back and assume it was only Santa’s responsibility to provide holiday happiness. As was often the case with those fine people I would personally meet and thank, J.W. recognized me immediately. For almost a dozen years, he had gladly kept our friendship secret. But now, in October of 1841, he’d come up with a new way to encourage Christmas trade at his store, and it involved me making a well-publicized personal appearance there. He’d nail posters to every tree in Philadelphia, J.W. vowed, each urging parents to bring their children to J. W. Parkinson’s at noon on December 18, one week before Christmas. There, the little ones would have the thrill of meeting Santa Claus, and at the same time their parents could purchase all the Christmas toys needed—J.W. would have available an especially big selection of dolls, whistles, hoops, and wooden blocks, among other playthings.

  “Business has been a bit slow of late, and so I want to do something to stimulate sales,” J.W. told me, his eyes flashing with excitement. He was someone who got so worked up about his own ideas that he couldn’t understand it when others didn’t share his enthusiasm. “I know you like to keep your presence in Cooperstown, New York, a secret”—until we moved to the North Pole in 1913, that was where my friends and I lived and made toys—“but I’ll protect your privacy. The children, of course, will be meeting the real Santa, but I’ll tell their parents I simply hired a stout bearded man to dress up in red-and-white robes to look like you. They’ll never know they were in the same room with the actual Kris Kringle!”

  I winced at the word “stout”—“burly” is so much more dignified—and held up my hand in a cautionary gesture.

  “So you’re not only asking me to endorse a specific store, you’re also asking me to lie?” I said, keeping my tone gentle. “I never deceive anyone, J.W. Telling parents that I wasn’t who I really am would be untrue.”

  “Think of the excitement in the eyes of the children you’d meet, Santa,” he pleaded, neatly switching the topic to a safer subject. “We’ve spoken of how you’ve dedicated your life to children, and yet you never really have the opportunity to spend time with them. You regret that so much, you’ve said over and over. Well, here’s your chance.”

  “And what of the children who couldn’t be at your store that day?” I asked. “If their parents chose to shop somewhere else, wouldn’t that mean they didn’t have the same opportunity to meet Santa? No, J.W., it’s out of the question. Let’s not discuss it any further. I have to be leaving for Cooperstown soon, but do you suppose Mrs. Parkinson has some of her tasty home-baked cookies for us to enjoy before I go?”

  In fact, she did, and for another half hour J.W. and I chatted about other things—the problems I sometimes had getting the proper feed for my reindeer, his endless efforts to find better brands of canvas work pants that would last farmers through more than one harvest—but I could sense he hadn’t given up on his Christmas plan. For the next several weeks, I expected a letter from J.W. to arrive at our isolated farm property in Cooperstown, pleading with me to reconsider. But nothing of the sort came, and by early December I had completely forgotten about it.

  Then one afternoon I was just going over my list of toys already in hand for Christmas Eve 1841—we had sufficient dolls crafted and stored in our massive Cooperstown barn, but there weren’t half enough wooden tops; with just three weeks to go, we’d have to spend a few extra hours crafting them every day right up to December 24—When my wife, Layla, knocked on the door of my study. I was glad to see her, as always. After almost sixteen centuries of marriage, her smile still makes my heart beat faster. But on this occasion, she wasn’t smiling.

  “Here is something you need to see,” Layla said, handing me a sheet of wrinkled paper. “Your friend J.W. Parkinson is going to have Santa at his store after all.”

  I put on my reading glasses and examined the paper, which turned out to be a promotional poster. In large letters, it announced “Kris Kringle in Philadelphia! Bring the little ones to J.W. Parkinson’s, 100 North Donovan Street, at noon exactly on December 18. Mr. Kringle himself will visit with the tots while Father and Mother take advantage of our store’s unmatched selection of holiday toys. See him arrive down our chimney! Don’t be late!” There was also a cartoon on the poster. It depicted a very heavy bearded man in fur-trimmed robes, reaching into a large sack overflowing with toys. On the side of the sack was printed, “My friends shop at Parkinson’s!”

  I felt both frustrated and sad. Despite my refusal, J.W.—a good man, I believed, one who truly loved Christmas and meant no harm to anyone—was doing something that went against everything the holiday was supposed to be about. That was frustrating. The sadness came from knowing trusting children would be introduced to an impostor. Some, I knew, would believe they
had truly met Santa Claus—or, in this case, Kris Kringle, a nickname by which I was known in some other parts of the world. Growing up in a German family, J.W. had undoubtedly called me Kris Kringle rather than Santa when he was a child. Now he was promising Kris Kringle to another generation of children. What if this Kringle-in-disguise was so obviously an actor rather than the real Santa that some children who’d come to meet him went away disillusioned, convinced that because he was a fraud, Santa Claus must not exist after all?

  “Even though we still have a great deal to do here before Christmas, I’ll go to Philadelphia at once and inform J.W. I simply forbid him to do this,” I told Layla.

  “I think it’s too late for that,” she replied. “One of our other friends in Philadelphia sent us this and added that the posters were already tacked up all over the city. Thousands of parents will have seen them by now, and many must be already making plans to take their children to J.W.’s store on the eighteenth. Perhaps you should appear as Kris Kringle after all.”

  “That is something I just cannot do,” I said. “Santa Claus by any name does not endorse products or stores. We’ll just have to hope that this promotion isn’t too disastrous. We’ll get the reindeer ready, and I’ll fly down to Philadelphia to see what happens for myself.”

  I didn’t go alone. Layla came along, as well as Ben Franklin, who’d lived much of his early life in Philadelphia. Felix, my oldest friend and helper, and historian Sarah Kemble Knight also decided to join us. Sarah was always a useful companion on such trips. In the early 1700s, she’d written the first book about traveling in the American colonies. Sarah had a fine memory for roads and rivers and could always suggest shortcuts that saved the reindeer considerable flying time.