It was the annual Covenant Village Retirement Community Christmas party. Santa was there looking young and vibrant as he networked among senior citizens like me. I stopped him, stared intently into his bespectacled eyes, and said, “Matt?”
He smiled. It was him, Matt Gibbons, the young whippersnapper who is operations manager for the community. He had a pillow for a belly, a wig of long gray hair beneath his Santa hat, and a false beard, all done so well he was barely recognizable. But I knew. You can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all the people all the time. I thought about punching him playfully in that fat pillow belly, but I didn’t want to ruin it for the believers in the room.
Truth is there are plenty of residents who could play Santa. “Plenty” might be a bit of an exaggeration as they would need to be men, and men are in relatively short supply in retirement communities. Let’s say there are a few among us who could have filled the Santa role with less disguise, if you know what I mean. Now Mrs. Santa, that would be a different story. Every woman on campus could be a plausible spouse for Old Saint Nick…