Children who have nothing but love give Santa the greatest gift of all

LOOK, the truth is that I get a kick out of it, even if no one else does.

Every year now I put on a great red suit with all the trimmings and I give Santa Claus a hand. I’m really proud of it. Fur lined jacket, trousers, and a huge black belt. Boots with fur trim on top. A great white wig, and a huge beard that goes over my real beard. I’ve lost a bit of weight recently, so I have to cinch the belt in a bit tighter.

There shouldn’t be any misunderstanding, mind you. I know full well that the big fellow is on his way. My own grandson, who’s just short of three years old, instructed me yesterday that I was to be sure to have enough carrots in stock for next Friday night. When I asked if the carrots were for Rudolph, he sighed that exasperated sigh that only a three-year old can muster. “Don’t you know, Grandad, there are six reindeers and they’ll all be tired and hungry?”

But before Santa and the reindeer get here, there are a lot of Christmas parties to be covered. And there are parts of the country where even Santa Claus will be hard pressed to visit once on Christmas Eve. So there are times in the run-up to Christmas, when the elves are working double shifts up at the North Pole, and neither Mr nor Mrs Claus can be spared from the job of wrapping and packing, when a temporary substitute is acceptable.

The great thing about putting on that red suit for a few days every year is that you get to escape from everything. And you meet amazing people. I’ve sat in grottoes put together from paper and string, but with such imagination that it’s like another world. And every year I get to work with people who go to enormous lengths to ensure that every child who comes to see Santa Claus gets a great gift. Every time I put my hand into the sack, I’m never sure what’s going to come out.

But somehow or other, because of the preparation put into it, the present is always just right.

In the years I’ve being doing the job, I’ve met an awful lot of mums and dads too, who get a huge pleasure out of their kids’ excitement.

And all too often — this year, actually, more than any previous year — that pleasure is tempered by the thought that other aspects of Christmas are going to be really tough. It’s not going to be easy for a lot of families this year to put a really good meal on the table on Christmas day. But I’ve seen that fear dispelled, at least for a moment, by the sight of their children shaking hands gravely with Santa Claus.

For me, though, the real privilege has been in meeting the children.

And you meet all sorts. Over the years I’ve met some children who were in a state of high excitement until the moment Santa arrived, and then that excitement suddenly turned to terror. And I’ve met really doubtful children, children who wanted to make absolutely certain that Santa was as real as he could be (if they get a good grip on the two beards, that can be pretty painful, I promise). I’ve even met some children who were quite convinced they were meeting a fake, but were willing to take the present anyway.

A couple of years ago, I met two little girls with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. They were quiet, respectful, dignified — all the things children should never be in the presence of Santa Claus. These were two little girls who had had to carry adult burdens, of a sort that no child should have to carry. As a result, there was no expectation in their eyes, no hope that anything would happen to change anything.

And of course, I couldn’t work the magic that the real guy can work.

But I spent more time with those two little girls than any other children I’ve met, to try to convince them that they really mattered to Santa Claus. I don’t know if I succeeded, and I’d love to know. I’d love to know that in the middle of all the things those little girls have to worry about, there’s a memory of one moment when they were able to put all their cares completely to one side.

But often it’s easier. Sometimes a little boy or girl will come in, and you know immediately that they believe, absolutely and completely, in what’s happening. You can see it in their eyes, and you can hear it in the trembling whisper when you ask them what they’re hoping to get for Christmas. It couldn’t be more real. They’ve met Santa Claus and they’ve told him, face to face, that they’re going to be good between now and Christmas.

When you meet children like that, whose belief is total, you float home. Except last week. Last week I met 150 children in one afternoon. It was the most incredibly exciting afternoon in one way, because these were children who really knew that Santa Claus himself had gone out of his way to visit them.

They were all dressed in their Sunday best, and the little presents we were able to give were received with wide-eyed excitement and gratitude. Their mums and dads were gracious and kind, shaking hands with Santa as if he was a king.

But as I left them, all I could think about was the lives those children lead, and what their experience says about us.

They are the children of asylum seekers, and they live — in most cases for many years — in a reception centre. I won’t say which one, because I don’t want to convey a wrong impression about the people who run the centre, who were very welcoming to us and went out of their way to create a party atmosphere for the children.

But it was a dreadful, soulless place, where families from a dozen different cultures live cheek by jowl with each other, where abject poverty is at the core of their lives, and where the only thing that saves the children is the love of their parents. Asylum-seeking families get the princely sum of €19 a week, and Christmas simply isn’t possible on that kind of money.

So the Christmas we organised — sweets, a DJ and some music, a present and a photograph from a fat man in a red suit — was their Christmas.

For 150 of the 156 children in the centre, it was the best we could do.

Six children were missing, from two families. Those two families has been deported back to their own countries two days earlier. Ten days before Christmas, they had been hustled out of the centre and back to misery.

The funny thing was, the rest of the children, those who could come to meet Santa Claus, really believed in him. They were happy, they were excited, and they were grateful. They couldn’t possibly know that in his heart, all Santa Claus could feel was shame.