A couple years ago, I discovered the Beach Boys song Santa’s Beard,
in which a boy recounts a rather traumatic experience taking his little
brother to meet Santa. The curious tyke tugs on the jolly old elf’s
beard, and it comes right off in his hands. Needless to say, the result
is something akin to the classic Norman Rockwell painting in which a
shocked lad holds up a Santa suit he discovered in a drawer. The suit
and the beard make the counterfeit Santa. The illusion isn’t too tricky
to pull off, but neither is the unmasking.
In Roger Duvoisin’s 1955 picture book One Thousand Christmas Beards,
Santa has had enough of all the impersonations. They really get his
dander up, and one year he decides that ranting to Mrs. Claus isn’t
enough. He’s going to take matters into his own hands and rid the world
of all these extra Santas. He wants to be able to say, to take a page
out of Tigger’s book, “The most wonderful thing about Santas is I’m the
only one!” His strategy? Travel extensively and yank the beards off of
every Santa he sees.
This book is five and a half decades old,
and it looks it. The illustration style is a mix of sketchy black and
white drawings and drab color pictures that mostly incorporate red and
green. Aside from the first two pages, which are fairly text-heavy, most
pages only have a sentence or two, and it’s presented in a sort of free
verse form. Most of the lines are fairly short, and some are pretty
poetic, particularly as Devoisin describes the situations of the various
Santas, most of whom are engaged in public services while dressed in
their disguises. I think my favorite is the sandwich man Santa, “who was
so thin / his red suit hung on him / like a flag on a pole on a
windless day.”
Santa Claus is a character known for his kindness
and generous spirit, and this shines through in virtually every book
and Christmas special that features him. Every once in a while, though,
Santa is portrayed as a real grouch. Rankin and Bass have portrayed him
this way a couple of times. In The Year Without a Santa Claus, he is ornery and self-indulgent, and in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
he’s just plain rude. Both times, he comes around, but it’s a little
jarring to see him behave that way, and that’s the case here as well. He
comes across as an egotistical crank, and only a stern talking-to from
the Mrs. is sufficient to show him the error of his ways
This is
a nostalgic book that offers a peek at Christmas of the 1950s. Some
parts of it are indeed outdated, like the shoeshine man on the corner or
the idea of buying a doll for a quarter. But I hope the most outdated
idea of all is the thought that Santa would fly into a rage over some
ordinary Schmoes just looking to spread a little Christmas cheer. The
situation is milked for humor, and in an entertaining touch, the man so
aggravated by imitation happens to have a pet parrot. This is a cute and
quirky tale, but really, Santa ought to know better.
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