Santa Visits Sallisaw

I saw Santa Claus! Yes! Really! I saw Santa Claus. I was driving east on Cherokee Street last week when Santa passed me going west. “Hey! Wait!” I yelled. Didn’t do a bit of good. He just kept on going. What was so startling about his drive past was he was driving a tiny little foreign car of some sort. It was white, and the car matched his beard perfectly. And the car was so small he nearly filled up the front window.  His beard was snow white, but I couldn’t see his belly so I don’t know if it shook like a bowl full of jelly.

What’s Santa doing in our small town? I wondered. Where’s Rudolph? Is the most famous reindeer of all suffering from a power outage? Is Santa lost because that bright nose has flickered out? And where were those other eight reindeer? You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen and Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen? Was Santa checking up on all the nice and naughty kids in Sallisaw? Which list was I on??? Oh good grief!

No, I am not hallucinating. I know this because I am not the only one who had a Santa sighting. I was present for the second sighting too. That’s when Delanna N., from here at KXMX 105.1, and I were driving somewhere, no doubt Christmas shopping. (I’m done, she’s not, HA!) Suddenly Delanna, who was behind the wheel, squealed, “There’s Santa Claus! Santa Claus is following us. He’s right behind us! I know it’s him!” I could relate, and explained my own sighting to Delanna. “I saw him last week. Was he in that little white foreign car?” Delanna didn’t know. But she reported, maybe a bit disappointed, “He had a gray beard.”

I countered, “Mine had a snow white beard.” Gray versus white beard? Made me wonder. But I have it on good authority, “His eyes — how they twinkled! His dimples: how merry, his cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.” Delanna was not to be deterred. “He’s right behind us! Maybe he’s checking us out. Maybe he’s checking to see if I’m naughty or nice. I’m nice. I hope he knows that. He’s following us because I’m nice. I know he knows I’m nice.”

But things change. “Oh no!” Delanna reported. “He’s turning the corner. He’s not following us anymore. I’m nice Santa. Really, I’m nice!” And so Delanna’s communication with Santa concluded. We hope Santa heard both of us declaring how nice we are. Really. And so I concluded, as was done so long ago, “And I laugh'd when I saw him in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.” Thank you Santa. And for those of you who think Delanna and I may still be children, well of course we are. And we will always believe that Santa will visit if we are, for sure, nice.(Editor’s Note: Thank you to Clement Clark Moore, and a few others who, I hope, will forgive me in this giving season for corrupting their Christmas poems. Mr. Moore’s was published in 1823, and remains the original description of Santa.

So, quoting the author one more time, “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”