By Whatever
Name

Five minutes before the Winter Solstice
circle was scheduled to begin, my mother called. Since I'm the only one
in our coven who doesn't run on Pagan Standard Time, I took the call.
Half the people hadn't arrived, and those who had wouldn't settle down
to business for at least twenty
minutes.

"Merry Christmas, Frannie."

"Hi, Mom. I don't do
Christmas."

"Maybe not--but I do, so I'll say it." she told me in her
sassy voice, kind of sweet and vinegary at the same time. "If I can
respect your freedom of religion, you can respect my freedom of
speech."

I grinned and rolled my eyes. "And the score is Mom -one,
Fran - nothing. But I love you, anyway."

People were bustling around
in the next room, setting up the altar, decking the halls with what I
considered excessive amounts of holly and ivy, and singing something like,
"O, Solstice Tree."

"It sounds like a...holiday party." Mom
said.

"We're doing Winter Solstice tonight."

"Oh. That's sort of
like your version of Christmas, right?"

I wanted to snap back that
Christmas was the Christian version of Solstice, but I held back.

"We
celebrate the return of the sun. It's a lot quieter than Christmas. No
shopping sprees, no pine needles and tinsel on the floor, and it doesn't
wipe me out. I remember how you had always worked yourself to a frazzle by
December 26."

"Oh honey, I loved doing all that stuff. I wouldn't trade
those memories for all the spare time in the world. I wish you and Jack
would loosen up a little for the baby's sake. When you were little, you
enjoyed Easter bunnies and trick-or-treating and Christmas
things. Since
you've gotten into this Wicca religion, you sound a lot like Aunt Betty the
year she was a Jehovah's Witness."

I laughed nervously. "Yeah. How is
Aunt Betty?"

"Fine. She's into the Celestine Prophecy now, and she seems
quite happy. Y'know," she went on, "Aunt Betty always said the Jehovah's
Witnesses said those holiday things were Pagan. So I don't see why
you've given them up."

"Uh, they've been commercialized and polluted
beyond recognition. We're into very simple, quiet
celebrations."

"Well," she said dubiously, "as long as you're
happy."

Sometimes long distance is better than being there, 'cause your
mother can't give you the look that makes you agree with everything she
says. Jack rescued me by interrupting.

Hi, Ma." he called to the phone as
he waved a beribboned sprig of mistletoe over my head. Then he kissed me,
one of those quick noisy ones. I frowned at him.

"Druidic tradition,
Fran. Swear to Goddess."

"Of course it is. Did the Druids use plastic
berries?"

"Always. We'll be needing you in about five
minutes."

"Okay. Gotta go, Mom. Love you."

We had a nice, serene
kind of Solstice Circle. No jingling bells or filked-out Christmas Carols.
Soon after the last coven member left, Jack was ready to pack it
in.

"The baby's nestled all snug in her bed," he said with a yawn, "I
think I'll go settle in for a long winter's nap."

I heaved a martyred
sigh. He grinned unrepentantly, kissed me, called me a grinch, and went to
bed. I stayed up and puttered around the house, trying to unwind. I sifted
through the day's mail,
ditched the flyers urging us to purchase all the Seasonal Joy we could afford or charge.

I opened the card from his
parents. Another sermonette: a manger scene and a bible verse, with a
handwritten note expressing his mother's fervent hope that God's love and
Christmas spirit would
fill our hearts in this blessed season. She means
well, really. I amused myself by picking out every Pagan element I could
find in the card.

When the mail had been sorted, I got up and started
turning our ritual room back into a living room. As if the greeting card had
carried a virus, I found myself humming Christmas carols. I turned on
the classic rock station, but they were playing that Lennon-Ono
Christmas
song. I switched stations. The weatherman assured me that there was only a
twenty percent chance of snow. Then, by Loki, the deejay let Bruce
Springsteen insult my ears crooning, "yah better
watch out, yah better not
pout." I tried the Oldies station. Elvis lives, and he does Christmas songs.
Okay, fine. We'll do classical ~ no, we won't. They're playing Handel's
Messiah. Maybe the community
radio station would have something secular
humanist.

"Ahora, escucharemos a Jose Feliciano canta `Feliz
Navidad'."

I was getting annoyed. The radio doesn't usually get this
saturated with holiday mush until the twenty-fourth.

"This is too
weird." I said to the radio, "Cut that crap out."

The country station had
some Kenny Rogers Christmas tune, the first rock station had gone from John
and Yoko's Christmas song to Simon and Garfunkel's "Silent Night," and the
other rock station still had
Springsteen reliving his childhood. "--I'm
tellin' you why. Santa Claus is comin' to town!" he bellowed.

I was
about to pick out a nice secular CD when there was a knock at the door. Now,
it could have been a coven member who'd forgotten something. It could have
been someone with car trouble. It could have been any number of things, but
it certainly couldn't have been
a stout guy in a red suit--snowy beard, rosy
cheeks, and all--backed by eight reindeer and a sleigh. I blinked, wondered
crazily where Rudolph was, and blinked again. There were nine reindeer. Our
twenty-
percent chance of snow had frosted the dead grass and was continuing
to float down in fat flakes.

"Hi, Frannie." he said warmly, "I've
missed you."

"I'm stone cold sober, and you don't exist."

He
looked at me with a mixture of sorrow and compassion and sighed
heavily.

"That's why I miss you, Frannie. Can I come in? We need to
talk."

I couldn't quite bring myself to slam the door on this vision,
hallucination, or whatever. So I let him in, because that made more
sense then letting all the cold air in while I argued with someone who
wasn'tthere.

As he stepped in, a thought crossed my mind about
various entities
needing an invitation to get in houses. He flashed me a
smile that
would melt the polar caps.

"Don't you miss Christmas,
Frannie?"

"No." I said flatly, "Apparently you don't see me when I'm
sleeping
and waking these days. I haven't been Christian for
years."

"Oh, now don't let that stop you. We both know this holiday's
older
than that. Yule trees and Saturnalia and here-comes-the-sun,

doodoodendoodoo."

I raised an eyebrow at the Beatles reference, then
gave him my
standard sermonette on the appropriation and adulteration that
made
Christmas no longer a Pagan holiday. I had done my homework. I

listed centuries, I named names--St. Nicholas among them.

"In the
twentieth century version," I assured him, "Christmas is two
parts crass
commercialism mixed with one part blind faith in a
religion I rejected years
ago." I gave him my best lines, the ones
that had convinced my coven to
abstain from Christmassy cliches. My
hallucination sat in Jack's favorite
chair, nodding patiently at me.

"And you," I added nastily,"come here
talking about ancient customs
when you--in your current form--were invented
in the nineteenth
century by, um...Clement C. Moore."

He laughed, a
rolling, belly-deep chuckle unlike any department-
store Santa I'd ever
heard.

"Of course I change my form now and then to suit fashion. Don't
you?
And does that stop you from being yourself?" He said, and asked me

if I remembered Real Magic, by Isaac Bonewits.

I gaped at him for a
moment, then caught myself. "This is like
`Labyrinth', right? I'm having a
dream that pretends to be real, but
is only made from pieces of things in my
memory. You don't look a
thing like David Bowie."

"Bonewits has this
Switchboard Theory." Santa went on amiably, "The
energy you put into your
beliefs influences the real existence of
the archetypal--oh, let me put it
simpler: `in the beginning, Man
created God'. Ian Anderson."

He lit a
long-stemmed pipe. The tobacco had a mild and somehow
Christmassy smell, and
every puff sent up a wreath of smoke. "I'm
afraid it's a bit more
complicated than Bonewits tells it, but
that's close enough for mortals. Are
you with me so far?"

"Oh, sure." I lied as unconvincingly as
possible.

Santa sighed heavily.

"When's the last time you left out
hot tea and cookies for me?"

"When I figured out my parents were eating
them."

"Frannie, Frannie. Remember pinda balls, from
Hinduism?"

"Rice balls left as offerings for ancestors and
gods."

"Do Hindus really believe that the ancestors and gods eat pinda

balls?"

"All right, y'got me there. They say that spirits consume the

spiritual essence, then mortals can have what's left."

"Mm-hm." Santa
smiled at me compassionately through his snowy beard.

I rallied quickly.
"What about the toys? I know for a fact they
aren't made by you and a bunch
of non-union Elves."

"Oh, that's quite true. Manufacturing physical
objects out of
magical energy is terribly expensive and breaks several laws
of
Nature--She only allows us to do that on special occasions. It

certainly couldn't be done globally and annually. Now, the missus
and
the Elves and I really do have a shop at the North Pole. Not the
sort of
thing the Air Force would ever find. What we make up there
is what makes
this time a holiday, no matter what religion it's
called."

"Don't
tell me," I said, rolling my eyes, "you make the sun come
back."

"Oh
my, no. The solar cycle stuff, the Reason For The Season, isn't
my
department. My part is making it a holiday. We make a mild, non-
addictive
psychedelic thing called Christmas spirit. Try some."

He dipped his
fingers in a pocket and tossed red-gold-green-silver
glitter at me. I could
have ducked. I don't know why I didn't.

It smelled like snow, and pine
needles, and cedar chips in the
fireplace. It smelled like fruitcake,
cornbread savory herbal
stuffing, like that foamy white stuff you spray on
the window with
stencils. It felt like a crisp wind, Grandma's hugs, fuzzy
new
mittens, pine needles scrunching under my slippers. I saw twinkly

lights, mistletoe in the doorway, smiling faces from years gone by.

Several Christmas carols played almost simultaneously in a kind of

medley. I fought my way back to my living room and glared sternly at
the
hallucination in Jack's chair.

"Fun stuff. Does the DEA know about
this?"

"Oh, Frannie. Why are you such a hard case? I told you it's
non-
addictive and has no harmful side effects. Would Santa Claus lie to

you?"

I opened my mouth and closed it again. We looked at each other
a
while.

"Can I have some more of that glittery stuff?"

"Mmmm.
I think you need something stronger. Try a sugarplum."

I tasted rum ball.
Peppermint. Those hard candies with the picture
all the way through. Mama's
favorite fudge. A chorus line of
Christmas candies danced through my mouth.
The Swedish Angel Chimes,
run on candle power, say tingatingatingating.
Mama, with a funny
smile, promised to give Santa my letter.

Greeting
cards taped on the refrigerator door. We rode through the
tree farm on a
straw-filled trailer pulled by a red and green
tractor, looking for a
perfect pine. It was so big, Daddy had to cut
a bit off so the star wouldn't
scrape the ceiling. Lights,
ornaments, tinsel. Daddy lifted me up to the
mantle to hang my
stocking. My dolls stayed up to see Santa Claus, and in
the morning
they all had new clothes. Grandma carried in platters with the

world's biggest Christmas dinner. Joey's Christmas puppy chased my

Christmas kitten up the tree and it would have fallen over but Daddy

held it while Mama got the kitten out. Daddy said every bad word
there
was but he kept
laughing anyway. I sneaked my favorite plastic horse into the

nativity scene, between the camels and the donkey.

I came back to
reality slowly, with a silly smile on my face and a
tickly feeling behind my
eyes like they wanted to cry. The
phrase "visions of sugarplums" took on a
whole new meaning.

"How long has it been," Santa asked, "since you played
with a
nativity set?-"

"But it symbolizes--"

"The winter-born
king. The sacred Mother and her sun-child. Got a
problem with that? You
could redecorate it with pentagrams if you
like, they'll look fine. As for
the Christianization, I've heard who
you invoke at Imbolc."

"But
Bridgid was a Goddess for centuries before the Catholic Church-
oh." I
crossed my arms and tried to glare at him, but
failed. "You're a sneaky old
Elf, y'know?"

"The term is `jolly old Elf.' Care for another
sugarplum?"

I did. I tasted gingerbread. My first nip of soy eggnog the
way the grown-ups drink it. Fresh sugar cookies, shaped like trees and
decked with colored frosting. Dad had been laid off, but we managed
a
lot of cheer. They told us Christmas would be "slim pickings." Joey and I
smiled bravely when Mama brought home that spindly spruce. We loaded down
our "Charlie Brown Christmas Tree" with every light and ornament it could
hold. Popcorn and cranberry strings for
the outdoor trees. Mistletoe in the
hall: plastic mistletoe, real kisses. Joey and I snipped and glued and
stitched and painted treasures to give as presents.

We agonized over
our "Santa" letters...by now we knew where the goodies came from, and we
tried to compromise between what we longed for and they thought they could
afford. Every day we hoped the
factory would reopen. When Joey's dog ate my
mitten, I wasn't brave. I knew that meant I'd get mittens for Christmas, and
one less toy. I cried. On December twenty-fifth we opened our presents
ve-ery slo-
wly, drawing out the experience. We made a show of cheer over
our socks and shirts and meager haul of toys. I got red mittens. We
could tell Mama and Daddy were proud of us for being so brave, because
they were grinning like crazy.

"Go out to the garage for apples." Mama
told us, "We'll have apple pancakes."

I don't remember having the
pancakes. There was a dollhouse in the garage. No mass-produced aluminum
thing but a homemade plywood dollhouse with wall-papered walls and real
curtains and thread-spool
chairs. My dolls were inside, with newly sewn
clothes. Joey was on his knees in front of a plywood barn with hay in the
loft. His old farm implements had new paint. Our plastic animals were
corralled in
popsicle stick fences. The garage smelled like apples and hay,
the cement was bone-chilling under my slippers, and I was crying.

My
knees were drawn up to my chest, arms wrapped around them. My chest felt
tight, like ice cracking in sunshine. Santa offered me a huge white
handkerchief. When all the ice in my chest had melted, he
cleared his
throat. He was pretty misty-eyed, too.

"Want to come sit on my lap and
tell me what you want for Christmas?"

"You've already given it to me."
But I sat on his lap anyway, and kissed his rosy cheek until he did his
famous laugh.

"I'd better go now, Frannie. I have other stops to make,
and you have work to do."

"Right. I'd better pop the corn tonight, it
strings best when it's stale."

I let him out the door. The reindeer
were pawing impatiently at the moon-kissed new-fallen snow. I'd swear
Rudolph winked at me.

"Don't forget the hot tea and
cookies."

"Right. Uh, December twenty-fourth, or Solstice, or
what?"

He shrugged. "Whatever night you expect me, I'll be there. Eh,
don't wait up. Visits like this are tightly rationed. Laws of Nature,
y'know, and She's strict with them."

"Gotcha. Thanks, Santa." I
kissed his cheek again. "Happy Holidays."

The phrase had a nice,
non-denominational ring to it. I thought I'd call my parents and in-laws
soon and try it out on them.

Santa laid his finger aside of his nose and
nodded.

"Blessed be, Frannie."

The sleigh soared up, and Santa
really did exclaim something. It sounded like old German. Smart-aleck
Elf.

When I closed the door, the radio was playing Jethro
Tull's
"Solstice Bells."