Christmas Past: No more Sunday School for little Jimmie

The holiday season always serves to remind me of a very special secret my father and I shared for almost four decades. He’s gone now, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my sharing it with others. He’d laugh too, I suspect, because this really happened.

When I was about five, my family attended a church in downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming. One week, the Sunday School teacher announced that each of us would be expected to stand up in front of the group the next Sunday and tell what Christmas really meant to us.

I wasn’t into public speaking back then so the assignment didn’t exactly thrill me. Indeed, when the next Sunday morning rolled around, I decided to go with Plan B ... faking an illness.

Imagine my surprise when my father said, “Your brother is already faking his own illness, so your mother is staying home with him. You’re going with me. Get dressed.”

It wasn’t a suggestion. Bummer.

As we left our home and headed toward downtown, my father took note of my less-than-enthusiastic slump against the passenger door.

“There must be a good reason you don’t want to go to Sunday School today,” he said. “If you’ll tell me what it is, I might be able to help.”

After considering my limited options, I finally confided in him about my impending public speaking assignment and the fact that I didn’t have a clue what I was going to say to my little classmates.

Just before we got to the church, my 44-year-old father, who often referred to anyone over 60 as an “old buzzard,” finally offered what he must have thought was sage advice under the circumstances.

“Just tell them,” he said with a straight face, “that Santa Claus is an old buzzard.”

I loved and respected my father very much, but even at age five, I suspected his advice on this particular occasion fell a little short of the mark.

When my turn to speak came, however, his words, “Santa Claus is an old buzzard,” were the only ones which came tumbling out of my cherubic little mouth.

What happened next is just a blur now. I recall several of my classmates gasping and a few of them sobbing uncontrollably after I shared my father’s little witticism. I turned and saw many ashen faces as the teacher dragged me by my arm out into the hall.

“You sit right there until your parents come down from upstairs,” the teacher ordered. “And don’t even think about coming back into that classroom until you apologize to the other children for the terrible thing you said.”

Someone was sent to find my father and tell him there was a problem with their otherwise perfect five-year-old.

“Are you really sick after all?” My father asked when he saw me sitting on the hallway floor.

“No, Dad,” I responded. “She kicked me out and told me I can’t come back because I said Santa is an old buzzard.”

This led to a fairly animated discussion between my father and the Sunday School teacher. As a refinery foreman, he was a little lacking when it came to tactful dialogue with other adults with whom he disagreed, so the level of discourse went downhill quite rapidly.

The last straw was when the teacher told him that I could never, ever come back to Sunday School until a sincere apology was given for my inappropriate remarks to the class.

“For a variety of reasons,” my father responded, “that’s never going to happen, sister, so I guess none of us will be coming back.”

The drive home was a quiet one to be sure. The only thing I remember my father saying was when we turned into the alley and he suggested, “I don’t think your mother needs to know everything that happened today at church. Do you agree?”

“Okay, Dad. It’ll be our own little secret,” I responded as I got out to open the garage door.

And it was our secret for almost 40 years.

I finally told my mother about the incident a few years after my father’s death. To my surprise she laughed long and hard about the whole thing.

“That father of yours,” she said with a big smile, “Sometimes he said some very goofy things and he always thought he could actually keep secrets from me. I’ve known about that since the day after it happened.”

Bummer.

Editor’s note: Jim Mathewson now lives in Sun City and said he happily qualifies as an “old buzzard.”