A New York Christmas story - 26 December 1997

Some years ago, almost 50 to be exact, I devoted three successive Christmas time talks to stories, each based on some queer news item.

In response to – I won't say deafening – popular demand, but to those people who down the years have wanted to hear one of them done again, I decided this time to forget our troubles (Saddam Hussein, Bosnia, the slumping economies of Asia) and retell one story, based on a news item about a college in upstate New York which gave a degree course in becoming a professional Santa Claus. Here it is then. It's true, so far as I know, and is intended for children of all ages.

In the middle of Rockefeller Plaza, in the middle of New York City, there stands at Christmas time a great tree – a Norway fir, 70 feet high. It's fitted out with several thousand tiny white light bulbs and is a proper meeting place of a modern and an ancient Christmas, for it magnificently sprays a cascade of electricity over a Gothic spire.

It was at this tree a year ago that Santa Claus got into trouble.

The real name of Santa Claus, by the way, is Zebby Adams. He lives in what we used to call an old folks' home. I can't say for sure what Zebby stands for. Most likely Zebulun, one of those biblical first names that are common still in New England and make so many unlikely-looking Americans sound like 17th Century bishops.

Zebby Adams had been a small-town banker in Massachusetts and was wiped out in the 1929 Crash. He was a widower by then and had few relatives. His house had been attached to debts he couldn't pay. So as not to embarrass his old neighbours, he told them he was going to live with a friend out west. But in fact, he took a bus 200 miles down to New York and worked anonymously for ten years or so doing odd secretarial and accounting jobs. He lived in a rented room and saved a few dollars whenever he could. Having lost his faith in the banking system, he kept his savings in a miniature mahogany desk. He kept them there for the day when he would feel the first twinge of old age.

One morning a few years ago, he woke up and felt that twinge. And he went at once to the little desk and opened his bottom drawer. There were bills of all denominations stuffed in there, which he took out and unfolded and counted. To his amazement they came to a considerable sum. He didn't hesitate for long. He went off to an old folks' home and offered his savings (as he put it) as a contribution towards the upkeep of the tenants, of whom he hoped he might become one. They took him in. He's there today.

Now Zebby, a gentle blue-eyed man with tiny hands and a portliness that belied his frail body, had long had a secret ambition. It was to be Santa Claus. He did it at the old folks' home two years in a row and delighted the old folks, some of whom had doubted there was any such person. But it did not satisfy Zebby. It only whetted his appetite.

And then, one morning late in the fall of last year, he read in a paper about a college way up the Hudson River, a college that offered a two weeks' course, guaranteeing to train and qualify Master Santa Clauses for employment in the big city department stores. "A calling," the advertisement said, "that has, for too long, been left to the amateur and the well-meaning bum."

Zebby Adams felt a wince of conscience on both scores and resolved to qualify as a professional. He told the treasurer of the home that he needed a loan for the course and bed and board and promised to repay it from his earnings in Christmas week. After a little niggling, he got it, wrote off to the college, filled in the application form, registered and at the end of the first week in December was on a train whistling up the Hudson.

He had the time of his life. He'd always loved children (perhaps because he'd never had any) and he had a way with them. It never occurred to him in all his life to try to mould them or show them what was what. He accepted them for what they were – and are – cobras, foxes, pit bulls.

He applied himself with much zest, and humility, to learning what the college had to teach. He never missed a class. The first one was in "Problems of Greeting the Child." To Zebby there was no problem and he got an A for that in three days flat.

"Personal Cleanliness in the Role of Santa Claus" was something else he had no trouble with. His family had been Episcopalians and, having boasted of venerable connections with the carpenters, butchers and parsons who came over on the Mayflower, they had very genteel notions about personal appearance, the proper haircut, visible length of shirt cuff, what sort of tie – silk, for instance – should never be worn with a tweed jacket. To be precise, Zebby was a Harvard man, but in ordinary civilised intercourse he always kept a decent secret of it.

There was a class in "Problems of Child Greed and Denial" which puzzled him sorely. He discovered to his horror that department stores do not give away any of the gorgeous articles they bait the children with. It was his understanding that Santa Claus appeared to the children as a benefactor dropped from the skies, who was practically honour bound to come through with the promised goods.

"That," said the instructor snappishly, "is not the point. It is what you appear to mean to the little ones that matters." That, said Zebby, was the way he'd always understood it. He got a ' in that course.

But he did very well in everything else, and at the end he impatiently took the train back to the city, carrying his bag and the make-up kit, the beard, deodorising spray, the eyebrow comb and the other professional doodads the college gave you along with your certificate. He also bore a letter of recommendation to the personnel manager of a big mid-town department store.

For the whole week, he was a sensation with the young and a source of misgiving to the floor manager, for in spite of his training, Zebby tended to sneak an occasional goodie to any particularly sympathetic tot. However, he more than earned his loan from the old folks' home and on Christmas Eve he picked up a handsome cheque and left the store.

He was happy and he was sad. He was also, I forgot to say, still dressed in his scarlet costume, a gift from the well-contented store. He itched to prolong his role, and he made a point of not changing into his street clothes. Instead, he showered moth flakes on his ordinary suit and packed it away in his bag.

To banish the thought of his lonely return to the home, he stopped by a nearby bar and grill and it was such a warming sight that strangers hailed him and bought him drinks. The waiters slipped him a stein of "heel taps" – the leavings of orders of brandy, whisky, champagne and beer, to which the kitchen help added a little spice and sugar and so brewed up a powerful punch.

When Zebby Adams left the place it was very late and, I'm sorry to say, he was not himself. He started to march uptown swinging his bag in alarming circles. All the tiredness of his new-found old age had magically disappeared.

He suddenly thought of the tree in Rockefeller Plaza and hurried to bask in its genial blaze. By the time he came in sight of it, he heard the three notes of the National Broadcasting Company's signature tune peeling out on the midnight clear. They were sounding, in fact, the witching hour. And as they died on the air, the big tree's thousand lights went out. The only light in the Plaza was on the roof of a parked taxi hoping for a fare.

And that was the fatal moment in the new old age of Zebby Adams. For the little yellow light revived another long buried ambition, which a whispering reindeer was now reminding him of: it was the longing to drive a cab. He pattered over to the driver.

"My good fellow," he cried.

"Listen," said the driver, "I ain't nobody's good fellow, I'm a Democrat."

The driver also, I should say, was not himself. Zebby, however, leaned against the cab and told his secret to the driver.

"I couldn't do a thing like that," the driver said. "Liable to get my head broke or a ticket or somethin'."

"Only sit by my side, " Zebby pleaded, "I will be a learner. You can be my sponsor, my teacher. The traffic bureau regulations permit it."

"Wee-ll, " said the driver. Zebby saw his chance and almost lulled the driver to sleep with a flood of persuasive eloquence. He acknowledged the "enormous favour" he was begging. And more than that, he argued, Santa as a cab driver on Christmas Eve would represent "a deep symbolic act." The driver bounced awake at the word 'symbolic'. He liked it.

"Is that what it would be, symbolic?"

"Nothing less," said Zebby, stroking his beard with one hand and pointing to the stars with his other.

The driver jumped out on his side and staggered around the cab to pull the other door wide open – pointed to the steering wheel, bowed low and said, "Santa, it's all yours."

Santa hopped in and banged the door and ground into gear. And once he turned uptown and saw the splendid highway of Park Avenue ahead, with its long line of trees looking like fountains of light and not a human anywhere, he got the authentic high sign from the reindeer that had whispered to him in the Plaza.

He pressed his foot way down and as the long lane of traffic lights winked from red to green and green to red again, Santa flew on. A Cadillac screamed to a stop at 59th Street, as it skidded across the avenue when the light changed. Through the 60s, the crosstown streets flashed by like the ribs of a waving fan. "Hot diggety!" cried Santa and they flew on. They didn't fly very far before they heard behind them a sound of bells. "Donner and Blitzen," shouted Santa, "they are with us still."

"You know them personally?" asked the driver.

"Splendid fellows both," roared Santa. It was not, however, the reindeer, it was a cop.

When they came into night court, the judge on the bench looked stonily down at Zebby. "Name?" he asked.

"Adams, Zebulun."

The judge wrote it down without a comma. "Trade or profession?" he said, looking in his book.

"Santa Claus," said Zebby. "Master Santa Claus."

The judge scraped at his teeth with a fingernail. "Five days in jail," he said. "Have you anything to say for yourself?"

"Merry Christmas, your honour," Zebby said.

"And five days for contempt of court," the judge added.

"And a Happy New Year," said Santa. The judge paused. He put his thumbnail to his teeth again and this time he rescued a shred of beef. "Sentence suspended," he said.

The cab driver, who'd been snoozing through all this was wakened to take Zebby back to the cab and drive him way uptown and stop before an iron gate. He led Zebby gingerly out of his side, opened the gate for him and kissed him on both cheeks.

"Bon sewer, mon general!" he said, as Zebby trotted up the path to the old folks' home. He stopped at the door, lifted his bag by way of a salute and looked back. "Au revoir, mon colonel!" cried Zebby.

And a Happy New Year to you all.

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING OF THE ORIGINAL BBC BROADCAST (© BBC) AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

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