Some men have a midlife, or even late-life, crisis, where they buy sports cars, get their eyes done by plastic surgeons, and go on quixotic quests to reclaim their youth. God knew what he was doing, so the closest I ever got to a midlife crisis was daydreaming about a model train table once my garage was free of decades of child-induced debris.
The children are gone, and I still do not have that train table, but I do have a grandson. Now there is a crisis almost every morning, trying to find the missing school shoe, or making sure we did not forget the homework packet in the backpack. This time of year, there is also the stress of deciding what “we” are going to be for Halloween.
Two years ago, the pre-K version of our grandson decided he wanted to be the monster from “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” Last year, he conjured something from the recesses of his imagination called a “Dinosaur Bat.” Thanks to the papier-mache talents of my sister, the creature looked scary, and my wife’s skill with needle and thread made a convincing “Dinosaur Bat,” whatever exactly that is.
This year is going to be a little different. Our grandson delivered us a fastball down the middle with his request this year: he wanted to be a pirate this Halloween. That would only necessitate two visits to the local thrift store, and costume anxiety syndrome would be averted.
This year is different for another reason. The tradition at our school is that, in honor of All Saints’ Day, first-graders get to dress up as saints for the school Mass. Now, in keeping with another tried-and-true family tradition, this news came to us later than was scheduled, and by the time we discovered this costume change, most of the “good” saints were already spoken for.
Call it a Christmas miracle come early, but as we scrolled down the list of saints on the school assignment website and saw one “taken” notification after another, we landed on St. Nicholas. He was available, so we clicked “dibs” on him. At least we did not have to produce a St. Sebastian costume, but it might have been neat to send my grandson to school with arrows sticking out of him.
There was an issue with St. Nicholas. A priest friend of mine, when learning of the saint we were going to represent, seemed hesitant, and asked as politely as he could if we were going to portray him as something else — and I knew what he meant. And the answer was no.
I do not mind the fellow with the penchant for breaking into houses via chimneys and whose commercialized image has been imprinted on popular culture for almost a century, thanks largely to the wisdom of Coca-Cola.
I do resist, though, the tendency of a trademarked marketing tool throwing shade on a man who was real and saintly. We just wanted to give a saint his due, even if it means going through the prism of a first-grader.
We therefore have gone “all in” with portraying St. Nicholas as the man he was: a bishop of the Church, a man dedicated to the poor, and someone who suffered for the name of Jesus. Now we are talking about a first-grade costume project that also requires a five- to six-sentence report on the aspect of Nicholas’ life, which must be read out loud in “Donuts with a Saint” during a pre-All Saints’ Day event.
We covered the biggest aspects: a man of God who gave away his riches and was committed to the prisoner and the poor. I did edit out the story about St. Nicholas at the Council of Nicaea, where he punched the heretical Bishop Arius in the nose.
So, our grandson is going to look as much like a bishop of the 4th century Church as we can imagine, which is bringing with it a lot of pressure from the various departments in our household, i.e., props, wardrobe, hair and makeup, and acting coach.
With the help of St. Nicholas’ intervention — and maybe one more trip to the thrift store and Lowe’s for a stick that can be formed into a workable crozier — our grandson may not be a saint yet, but he sure is going to look like one.
