Creative Nonfiction Contest Finalist
I’ve Ruined 1,001 Christmases
Playing Santa for adults isn’t what I expected
For 15 years I played Santa Claus. You might think that sounds like a blissful experience, but playing the big red guy for adults requires counseling, coaching, and pot.
Such was the life of being a small, family-run e-commerce retailer during the holidays.
Operating an e-commerce gift business during Christmas meant 16–20 hour days of unpacking pallets into inventory locations and then finding them for customer shipments. The frenzied search to fulfill orders between November 1st through the shipping deadline in December was played out thousands of times against a cacophony of tape guns. Customer inquires were pointed and harried.
My teenage daughter, Noelle, assisted in answering phones and shipping on weekends and after school. Days often blurred together and I can remember conversations that went like this:
“What is today?”
“It’s Christmas Eve, Dad.”
