The big story this Christmas was, as usual, about Donald Trump. Not that the market crashed, the one he used to brag about (he takes credit when it goes up, blames someone else when it goes down); not that he fired another cabinet member or two or three; not that he attacked another ally. But that he asked a 7-year-old child on a public broadcast whether she still believes in Santa and indicated that at her age, belief in Santa is “marginal.” The video of this conversation went viral on Twitter.
The little girl reached him by calling NORAD ; she is Collman Lloyd in Lexington, South Carolina.
She contacted the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which has tracked Santa’s whereabouts for 63 years. A scientist answered the phone and asked Lloyd if she would like to speak with President Donald Trump. She was put on hold for six minutes and then he picked up the phone.
Here is the Donald in conversation with little Collman.
Presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted something he discovered in the papers of President John F. Kennedy. A little girl wrote to ask him whether Santa and the North Pole might be endangered by nuclear testing, and he answered her (given that the signature was printed, probably someone answered for him):
The classic response to the question about whether there really is a Santa Claus was printed in the New York Sun in 1897. Wikipedia tells the full story here.
It begins: “In 1897, Dr. Philip O’Hanlon, a coroner’s assistant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, was asked by his then eight-year-old daughter, Virginia O’Hanlon (1889–1971), whether Santa Claus really existed. O’Hanlon suggested she write to The Sun, a prominent New York City newspaper at the time, assuring her that “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.”[3] In so doing, Dr. O’Hanlon had unwittingly given one of the paper’s editors, Francis Pharcellus Church, an opportunity to rise above the simple question and address the philosophical issues behind it.” The full text of the editorial appears on the Wikipedia page, along with Virginia’s letter.
When Collman spoke to the President of the United States, she didn’t know what “marginal” meant.
According to the local paper, she still believes in Santa Claus.
Lloyd had never heard that word before, “marginal.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
She didn’t know it, but his comment about her age being marginal — and her response — would spark national news stories that night and the following morning.
Lloyd never did learn Santa’s whereabouts, but she was glad to be able to talk with her nation’s leader.
“I was like, ‘wow.’ I was shocked,” she said. “It wasn’t really (nerve-wracking), I just had to think of what the truth was.”
After the president hung up the phone, Lloyd sat in her kitchen with her parents, her 10-year-old sister, her 5-year-old brother and a friend. She wondered about Trump’s family, and what his Christmas Eve plans were.
If she ever had the chance to talk to the president again, Lloyd said, she’d ask him about his family.
“Most people know this question. I would like to ask if he has any kids,” she said. “I’ve honestly never heard of them or seen any of them so I was wondering.”
That night, Lloyd and her siblings left iced sugar cookies and chocolate milk out for Santa. The next morning, they were gone, and under the tree was a wrapped gift with Lloyd’s name on it: a brand new American Girl doll.
Santa is real after all, Lloyd said.
She doesn’t know that the president has children. She has led a happily sheltered life. That’s okay. After all, she is only 7. Let’s hope she doesn’t call Trump to ask about the Tooth Fairy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I read a piece from The New Yorker.com this morning that should have gone viral instead of Trump’s, (a corpulent man that has never wanted for anything who sits on gold plated toilet seats when he’s at home in Trump Tower — even when he is constipated which is probably most of the time considering his diet), stunt talking to a 7-year old about Santa.
I recommend reading what The New Yorker has to say about “Why The Russian Influence Campaign Remains So hard to Understand”
… “Russian propaganda is cacophonous. This is its single most important distinguishing feature, and it is the one that never fails to confound Americans. Americans assume that propaganda serves a clear, actionable objective: campaign propaganda is intended to make you vote a certain way, and war propaganda is intended to make you hate the enemy and support the troops. The same assumptions, Americans think, hold for totalitarian propaganda: it is probably intended to make everyone support the regime. In fact, the purpose of totalitarian propaganda is to take away your ability to perceive reality.” …
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-the-russian-influence-campaign-remains-so-hard-to-understand
After reading this piece, my first thought was: Trump is an illegitimate president and everything he does while he holds that office is illegitimate even if Muller makes no connection between Trump and Russia’s efforts to get Trump elected and defeat Hillary Clinton.
This has to be one of the president’s proudest moments. He knows more than a seven year-old. He knows the word ‘marginal’. Three syllables! I wonder if he can spell it too. Maybe that’s asking too much.
LeftCoastTeacher: Even people with Alzheimer’s have good and bad days. This was a good day for Trump. Most of his simple vocabulary revolves around the word, “I”.
As immediately understandable and ridiculous this story is, let’s not get distracted from what’s important. A compact reminder from Harper’s Weekly message:
“While speaking to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during a phone call that had been arranged by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in order to clarify his threats against US-supported Kurdish forces, Donald Trump told the Turkish president, “Okay, it’s all yours,” and repeatedly said that the United States would completely withdraw from Syria as soon as possible. “I’ve done more damage to ISIS than all recent presidents…. not even close!” Trump tweeted. US Secretary of Defense General James Mattis, who said, “It’s fun to shoot some people…. I like brawling,” while discussing the war in Afghanistan, responded to the announced pullout by resigning from his post on Thursday, and stated his last day would be February 28, 2019; on Sunday, the president announced that he would remove Mattis from his post January 1, 2019. Trump, who once told Mattis to “go in” to Syria and “kill the fucking lot of them” and that “you don’t need a strategy to kill people,” announced that the interim acting defense secretary would be a former executive of Boeing, the second-largest defense contractor in the world. After Trump stated that he would be “proud” to force a government shutdown and the Senate failed to approve $5.7 billion for the erection of a wall or spiked steel slats across the southern border, the government ceased operations for the third time this year, forcing 420,000 employees to work without pay through the holidays and placing another 380,000 on unpaid leave. The US Geological Survey, which monitors earthquake and water conditions around the world, has stopped displaying real-time updates as part of the shutdown, retaining only 75 of its estimated 8,032 employees; without this data, seismologists in Indonesia have been limited in their ability to predict if another tsunami will follow the one that hit the country Saturday, which killed at least 429 people and left hundreds more injured. An Iraq War veteran living in Miramar, Florida, created a GoFundMe titled “We the People Will Build the Wall” which has raised $17,239,732 of its $1 billion goal; contributions in US Dollars to GoFundMes that were created to provide relief to Indonesia after the earthquake and tsunami in September, which killed at least 2,256 people and injured more than 10,000 others, total $128,453.”
Sickening. BTW, Brookings estimated the actual cost of Trump’s wall at 70 billion. SO, if the GoFundMe has raised 17 million from morons, there’s only sixty-nine billion nine hundred eighty-three million left to go. LOL. Serves these people right to have their money wasted.
Have you seen the piece this morning analyzing the wall that Trump wants to build?
Trump wants to use steel posts soaring about 28-feet above ground level and the posts would be set about 9.5 inches apart. Many skinny people will easily squeeze through that gap and drug dealers will be able to pass packages the right size through too. Right from the start, Trump’s concept for this wall is a failure before it is even built … if it is ever built.
The piece explained that Trump’s original promised wall during the 2016 election would be all solid pre-fab concrete panels moved to the border and installed, but somewhere along the line without explaining why, Trump changed his concept to those steel posts with wide gaps between them.
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping and Other Weird, Creepy, and Wonderful Fun Facts about Santa Claus | Bob Shepherd
This is a piece I originally wrote for children. For them, I left out some of the stuff in paragraphs 5, 7, and 12, below. LOL. Sharing this again ’cause. . . . Christmas. My little tribute to the Santa, all his subordinate clauses, to to all the Pole-ish peoples.
1 Every year, around Christmas, some newspaper runs a story saying that Santa Claus was invented by the Coca Cola Company. But there’s a problem with those stories. They aren’t true. Back in the 1931, the soft drink company did hire an artist named Haddon Sundblom to create Christmas ads. Those ads pictured a plump, jolly Santa with rosy cheeks, a red suit, and a white beard. The Santa ads were a big hit. Coca Cola created new Santa ads every year until the 1960s. A myth was born that Santa was created by Coca Cola.
2 However, long before the Coca Cola ads, Santa Claus had already appeared in other illustrations wearing a red suit and a beard. For example, Norman Rockwell painted a red-suited, white-bearded Santa for a 1921 magazine cover. That cover appeared ten years earlier than did the first of the Coca Cola Santas. So, Coca Cola didn’t invent Santa. It didn’t even create the image of him that most of us are familiar with. So, if Coke didn’t invent Santa, who did? The answer turns out to be odd and interesting.
3 About 1,800 years ago, people in Southern Europe were already giving gifts at Christmas. They were imitating the gift-giving Magi in the Bible (often referred to as the “three wise men,” though the number is not mentioned in the sole Biblical account, in Matthew. If you haven’t experienced Frankincense essence, btw, treat yourself; it’s wonderful). Some early Church leaders didn’t like this materialistic gift-giving frenzy. They thought that the gift-giving had gotten completely out of control. Lord knows what they would think if they lived today!
4 At the same time, in Northern Europe, there was a myth about the Norse God Odin. People said that every year, in the dead of winter, Odin would ride through the sky on his horse. He would bring gifts and punish the wicked. Odin wore a fur coat and had a big beard. In the same part of Europe, people told stories about little bearded elves, or gnomes, called tomtar. They wore green coats, played tricks on people, and brought presents.
5 About 1,700 years ago, there lived in Turkey a man named Nicholas. He became an important leader, a bishop in the Catholic Church. After Nicholas’s death, the Church made him a saint. This was a very high honor. They also created a holy day, on December 6, to celebrate him. It was called Saint Nicholas’s Day. Many stories were told about Saint Nicholas. Some told about how he protected children. People started telling stories about how Saint Nicholas would come on December 6 to bring presents to nice children and switches or coal to naughty children. In some of these stories, bad boys and girls would be carried away by a monster called the Krampus. (Depictions of the Dutch version of Krampus, Zwarte Piet, aka “Black Pete” or “Black Peter,” have been the subject, recently, of anti-racism demonstrations in the Netherlands). Later on, Saint Nicholas’s Day was moved to December 25, the same day as Christmas.
6 People continued to tell stories about Saint Nicholas bringing presents on Christmas, and in different countries, his name was slightly different. In England he was called Father Christmas. In France he was Pere Noel. In the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas was pronounced Sinterklaas. The old stories about Odin and the tomtar got combined with stories about Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas was imagined as a little elf man who would ride through the air and bring presents. He was often pictured as wearing a fur-lined coat and having a beard. So, Sinterklaas was a little like Saint Nicholas. He was a little like Odin. And he was a little like the elves.
7 When people from Northern Europe came to North America, they brought their ideas about Sinterklaas with them. By 1773, some people had already changed the name to Santa Claus. In 1809, a writer named Washington Irving wrote a book in which he told about a jolly Saint Nicholas. In Irving’s book, Nicholas had a big belly and wore a green coat. In 1821, a poem called “Old Santeclaus” was published in America. The poem pictured him riding in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Where did the idea of the reindeer come from? Well, in Lapland, reindeer are used to pull sleds called pulks. Lapland is in the far northern part of Europe. The writer was telling a Northern European story and added this detail to it. The elderly, white-bearded Lapp shamans used to harness their reindeer and drive out over the snow to collect Amanita muscaria mushrooms (those red ones with the white dots). They would wear red coats in imitation of their sacred shroom. They would gather the shrooms into bags flung about their shoulders. They couldn’t eat the shrooms directly because they were highly toxic. So, they fed them to the reindeer. Then, they drank the reindeer piss (yes, you heard that right) and tripped and saw visions. Illustrations of the Lapp shamans and their Amanita mushrooms were commonly reproduced on 19th century winter postcards, and all the elements of later Santa iconography are there–the red coats, the white beard, the snow, the sack over the shoulder, the reindeer, and the pipe.
8 Modern ideas about Santa Claus were probably most influenced by a poem called “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” This poem, also known as “The Night before Christmas,” was published in 1823. The poem tells about Santa coming to a house on Christmas Eve. In the poem, a man is awakened by a noise. He runs to the window and looks out. There he sees a little sleigh pulled by “eight tiny reindeer.” The poem even gives names to the reindeer. They are called Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Conner, and Blitzen. The sleigh lands on the roof. Then its “little” driver comes down the chimney. He is jolly and plump and dressed in fur. He has a pack full of toys. And he is said to be an “elf.” When he laughs, his tummy shakes “like a bowl full of jelly.” He fills the children’s stockings and disappears up the chimney again. In drawings made by the illustrator Thomas Nash in the late 1800s, Santa grew taller. He was no longer a little elf but the size of a full-grown man. Nash also gave Santa’s address as the North Pole. Another part of the Santa legend was born.
9 Many streams can run together to make one river. In the same way, many ideas from two thousand years of history ran together to create the story of Santa Claus.
10 In 1897, a little girl named Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to a newspaper in New York. She said, “Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?” A newspaper editor named Frank Church wrote this famous reply:
11 “Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. . . . How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance. . . . He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia . . . he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
12 In the 1960s, the songwriter Arlo Guthrie wrote his own tribute to Santa for the hippie generation:
Let’s get Santa Claus cause. . .
Santa Claus wears a red suit
Must be a Communist.
Wears a beard and long hair.
Must be a pacifist.
What’s in the pipe that he’s smoking?
Why do police guys beat on peace guys?
Copyright 2016. Robert D. Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Wow, I learned so much and knew so little.
Thank you.