The Best Santa

A love of Santas becomes a collection. By Sharon Schwalbach

Santa Photo: @ryaninmanphoto

YEARS AGO, I’M THINKING AROUND 40 YEARS OR SO, MOST EVERYONE HAD SOME SORT OF COLLECTION, SPECIFIC COLLECTIONS. Some collected salt dips or butter molds, maybe baskets or pewter. It wasn’t so much like the collections of today where you have a few of a special type of antique or vintage item that you choose selectively to add to your home, I’m talking a collection. I think that might be defined as many, like maybe a hundred or more. I know many of you remember those days, and for those of you who don’t, it was real. I chose to collect Santas and all who knew that seemed to find one more unique than the one before, just for me. I purchased some myself but many of them were gifted to me by family and friends. Each year I emptied a big cupboard to make room for them all to be displayed. I found so much joy each year in unwrapping each one and remembering where he was discovered or who gifted him to me.

There were so many Santas that held a special meaning, invoking thoughts of those who had gifted each one. Some were more special than others, much like many things to all of us, but one of my Santas was the most special of all. My Dad was always on a mission to find me an antique that he knew I would love, and he was so very good at it. From a wonderful old Hoosier cupboard and later the bread board with the shoofly to display on such cupboard. The two of us were junking when I purchased my very first memorable antique, a #3 salt glaze bee sting crock. I was 18, didn’t really have the $5 they were asking. Dad offered them $4. They accepted and that crock is a treasure to me still today.

I still hold dear the memory of the day he dropped in with the brown paper bag, handing it to me with a grin and an “I think you’ll like it”. I opened with anticipation.  A bit tattered and torn. A smudge of age here and there. An arm with a bell in the hand that no longer was able to animate as the motor was worn out. Shiny little black boots and the sweetest of faces. His beard was less than perfect and his cap a bit askew but to me he was the most perfectly beautiful Santa I had ever seen.

Each Christmas I take this special Santa from the tissue he’s wrapped in and most often a tear falls.  He finds a special place to sit to enable him to view those who surround him and all the holiday happenings. The happenings of a family enjoying life and its offerings. A son and daughter, the grands and all the extensions. A family who misses their Patriarch, each and every day, but most especially over the Holidays. Thirty years have passed and Dad has been gone 25 of those 30 years. He left us at 62 years young. He spent his last Christmas in the ICU waiting for a heart transplant, a heart he would never receive. I like to believe that there just wasn’t one out there quite good enough for him. Yes, that’s what I believe. I also believe that somehow through the eyes of my special Santa, Dad sees it all and the love he created. Through the eyes of that tattered and torn, but still so perfect Santa with the sweetest of faces. The Santa gifted to a daughter who loved him more. The Best Santa ever.