SantaKid Is Determined to Keep Christmas Instead of Exmas

In the vast majority of stories involving Santa Claus, the jolly old man with a red suit and white beard does not have any children. Every once in a while, however, a writer decides to change it up. Such is the case with James Patterson’s santaKid, illustrated by Michael Garland.

SantaKid is narrated by Santa’s daughter Chrissie, a Scandinavian-looking girl with long blond braids and a red knit hat. There’s a hyperactive tone to her narration, in which she rambles and interrupts herself and bubbles over with enthusiasm, so anxious is she to tell her story. Her dad doesn’t look like Santa most of the time, and in Patterson’s hands, he doesn’t magically start looking like Santa at Christmastime either; instead, he wears a padded suit and dyes the beard that he grows out only toward the end of the year.

The paintings are fairly appealing, especially of sweet, spunky Chrissie and the reindeer. The two-page spread in which she sits in her father’s sleigh with the reindeer hitched up is especially impressive. Santa’s Joe Schmo appearance takes a little getting used to, but he’s a lovable guy no matter what he looks like, and that comes across here. Meanwhile, the villainous Warrie Ransom, a ruthless business tycoon who forces Santa to sell Christmas to him, looks quite ferocious as he sneers up at readers from the page.

“You have to believe in something bigger than yourself,” Santa tells his daughter when she asks how he manages to pull off his Christmas Eve flight every year. This becomes her mantra, and she clings to it when she decides to go up against the cold corporation that seems bent on ruining Christmas by manufacturing shoddy, inappropriate toys, cultivating a spirit of despair among Santa’s elves and renaming the holiday Exmas.

I appreciate the anti-commercial slant of the book and Chrissie’s chutzpah in standing up to the big bad boss, who turns out not to be quite as tough as he looks. Of course, like The Year Without a Santa Claus and other stories in this vein, the plot hinges on “saving Christmas,” which means “allowing Santa’s deliveries to happen”. But it would still be Christmas without Santa’s presents.

The idea of believing in something bigger than yourself is a good one but is deliberately ambiguous. It’s not surprising that a story from the perspective of Santa’s daughter would equate Christmas with her dad, but that particular implication has always rubbed me the wrong way. On the whole, however, santaKid is a cute story encouraging children to stand up for what they believe in.