Holiday Story of the Day

December 1983

At this point, I'm about nine years old and still sorta believing in Santa Claus although I do remember complaining about staying up all night and hearing nothing on the roof.

During this holiday, I happened to catch an episode of that wonderful family/spy series "Scarecrow and Mrs. King." In this episode, Amanda (played by Kate Jackson) is being held hostage by the Russians on Christmas Eve. Mind you, she's pretending to be some man's daughter because he's a deep undercover spy who wants to see his daughter...yadda yadda yadda...

Anyway, after the Russians storm the cabin and hold them hostage, Amanda says something to the Russians about it being Christmas Eve and she should be home stuffing the stockings of her two kids and praying for world peace and stuff like that and of course this means that the Russians have a change of heart and decide to help everyone get really tanked on the vodka they brought. Anyway, when Amanda mentioned stuffing the stockings I turned and looked at my parents who were exchanging some uneasy glances with each other.

Brian: "Mom, why is she stuffing their stockings? Why isn't Santa doing that?"

Mom: "Her kids were really bad this year so Santa's not going to go to their house."

Brian: "Oh."