I loved Christmas the way an only child would love Christmas, because growing up with just your father and mother as playmates and confidants force most of us to live in our own imaginary worlds for prolonged periods of time. Pets are stand-in siblings. So are stuffed animals.

And when the lights went out at bedtime, when I was not ready for bed, I was a prisoner of my overactive imagination. All those funky-looking wood stains on closet doors and dresser drawers morphed into demons just waiting for my eyes to close so they could fuck with me properly. I spent one summer sleeping out in the well-lit hallway, as close to my parents’ bedroom door as possible. I was exhausted until Labor Day.

But at Christmas time? All those ungodly fears went away. The extra brightness outside my bedroom window from the twinkle lights of our own house and the neighbor’s across the cul-de-sac meant things were finally, mercifully safe. By mid-December, the pine-scented candles in the upstairs bathroom and garland wrapped around the banister were as good as bodyguards to me, so going to bed, staying in bed, and sleeping through the night were now easy tasks.

A big part of that comfort came from Santa Claus, and my belief in him was beyond a normal child’s fixation on toy delivery and holiday lore. Even at age five, I understood that some of the universal Santa tales were embellished. I knew he couldn’t possibly hit millions of homes all in a two-day span. This was simply good public relations, done for the sake of poor kids from Arab countries who lived in houses without chimneys and had no chance of ever seeing snow, let alone any good toys to get jazzed about.

But the real Santa Claus was, in fact, a sentient human being who made personal visits to the extra-special children living in split-level suburban houses with long driveways surrounded by paper-bag luminaries.

He began checking in to our house soon after the Christmas tree was sturdy in its stand in the living room. I knew this because, the very next day, a new ornament would miraculously appear. Just one, dangling there, shiny and weird. My mother would act puzzled, even a little annoyed, since the tree was still unadorned and she was a strict micromanager when it came to decorating it. She’d snatch the ornament off the sticky branch and turn to my father. “Did you do put this there?” He would act convincingly dumbfounded for a couple of minutes, then return to watching television.

This routine went on for years, with slight alterations. Sometimes the window of the upstairs guest room would be left open, the cold air would blow in. My mother would angrily call me upstairs like I was in trouble. There would be a couple packs of football stickers and a candy cane left a few feet in front of the window—hard evidence that Santa was a crafty, but sloppy, intruder. “He must have dropped these,” she’d huff and then slam the window shut.

Other times the shoes I’d leave downstairs the night before would emerge in front of my bedroom door the next morning, filled up with Blow Pops, or baseball cards. This took it a bit too far for my delicate peace of mind, though, since I was still a little leery about strangers lurking outside my door while I slept. Even Santa. So I began bringing my shoes upstairs regularly, placing them in front of my parents’ door instead. (To be fair to Santa, I’d diss the Tooth Fairy, too, and leave my bloody teeth wrapped in tissue underneath my mom’s pillow because I didn’t want any fairies flying around my head. Not for a quarter.)

By age seven, I was a full-blown snob about Santa. I would listen to my classmates discuss their holiday routines and watch them make their silly wish lists, all the while thinking, “They’re so off-base. Their parents must be awful people.” The day after Christmas that year I was at a neighbor’s house and inspected his haul. “That’s it?” I said, right in front of him and his flabbergasted mother. A year later I got into a fight with a Jewish kid on the walk home from the bus stop because he had the nerve to say “Santa Claus sucks!” I chased him all the way to his house, his clumsy backpack bouncing up and down until he made it safely inside his front door. Then I stood on his front lawn and yelled, “And put some lights up out here! You’re ruining it for the rest of us!”

There is an 8mm film from this era of my life. It’s shot during Christmas night, so all Santa’s presents have been opened. I’ve just unwrapped a gift from my aunt, a Super Stunt Devil Bike toy, something I actually wanted, which was rare from relatives. I’m wearing a bulky Christmas sweater, my hair is cowlicked, my teeth are pre-orthodontal, and my mother is kneeling down next to me. Here was the deal: “Now, Santa was supposed to drop this off this morning but he accidentally left it in the sleigh so he dropped it off at Aunt Ellen’s instead.” I nodded. This made sense.

I was in fourth grade, and it’d been a terrible summer. The sleeping problems became more traumatic. The anxiety jumped into my stomach once the dinner table was cleared and the sky went orange-gray-black. The tick-tick-tick of 60 Minutes, the horn crescendo of thank-you-goodnights at the end of Saturday Night Live: these were the indicators that my parents would be in bed, asleep, very soon, and I’d be in alone in my room, wide awake, once again. Multiple times that summer, I remember my father barging out of his room, picking me up from the hallway, and flinging me back into my bed. “GO TO SLEEP!” he’d yell, angry and half-naked. He’d slam my door. He’d slam his door. Then I’d hear my mother crying.

I was torturing everybody. My parents, by then, had had enough of my night terrors and hallway sleeping, enough to send me to a psychologist. The doctor, ingeniously named Dr. Weiner, diagnosed me with separation anxiety, common in only children, and put me on a strict no-caffeine diet. I began to drink warm milk before bedtime. I had a transistor radio to listen to Tom LaLaine’s Memory Lane, an AM radio show dedicated to 50s doo-wop and soul ballads, to calm my jittery nerves and distract me from my own head.