One thing I can’t excuse about Christmas is the Santa Pushers.
The last couple years, I’ve been treated to the job of helping out a santa who comes by my work to visit with kids. It’s a nice, low-key sort of thing. No cost, he comes multiple times so you never have to wait more than ten minutes maximum, and we even take pictures for free and then post them online so that people can download and print if they feel like it.
Couldn’t be more low pressure.
So why a mom, and it’s usually a mom, will use her body weight to shove a crying child onto a santa’s lap is a fucking mystery to me. It’s beyond a mystery. It’s mind-boggling and scary.
I watched a kid be sat on santa’s lap, cry, scoot onto the floor, curl into the fetal position, and then roll away. A rational parent would go ahead and power down the camera and say, Maybe next year. A Santa Pusher says, C’mon, honey. It’s Santa! You love Santa! He’s nice!
Don’t be a santa pusher. It makes you look like an asshole.
First of all, you would never do this to your child on Halloween. Do you whip out a camera and then shove him through the front door of a haunted house? No? Then why the fuck would you do it with santa? I understand that the fear of santa isn’t always rational, but neither is the fear of a man dressed like a skeleton or a teenager who walks around a corn maze in a wolf mask.
Secondly, you seem to be forgetting that this is not (if kids are reading, this is a good time to stop. Actually, why would kids be reading this in the first place?) actually santa claus, a supernatural being from the north pole with an endless supply of patience for bitchy children. This is a man, usually one who gets roped into doing it and isn’t making any sort of extra hazard pay or anything. Why you think it’s a good idea to shove your screaming child, who is gripping your shirt tight enough to rip it from your body, onto the lap of a strange man, is unfathomable. I know it’s easy to confuse him with a deity, but let’s also remember that most of the guys who look like jesus are not actually jesus, and I would not suggest leaving your children anywhere near someone who looks like jesus and invites your child onto his lap.
There’s some kitsch value to a picture of a kid screaming on santa’s lap, but you don’t need to be that person. That’s yet another problem that is solved easily by Google image search.