THE LAST NOËL

By

Josh Fischel

Santa crashed.
Santa crashed into a mountain.
Santa crashed into a mountain because of poor visibility.
Santa crashed into a mountain because of poor visibility, due to falling snow.

These things are all, awfully, true.

Awfully?

Eh, maybe not.  Maybe time settles the stomach, makes the facts of the situation more­—
less—
something.

It was something, this.

Santa’s blinking red beacon could not foreshadow the cold, long stare of the mountain.

It sounds like a joke.
Alas.

Santa crashing would be funny in that way that making children cry can be funny.

Except!

When Santa is not Santa, but actually real people – Mainers, two of them, plus a pilot, in late November, 1969 – it makes the story sad.  Less laughter.

Except! 

They were dressed as Santa.
Dressed as Santa, they were going to skydive all weekend – less reindeer – into shopping malls across Vermont.  From their bags of toys, parachutes would emerge instead, floating above them, holding their breath.
The old up and down for Christmas.
Ho! Ho! Ho!

Instead, Santa crashed into a mountain.

There had been time.
There had been those limitless last seconds you get right at the end, and the pilot had tugged on the wheel with weight and sudden, panicked confidence, seeking altitude.

Not enough.  The plane had beached like a whale, its belly first, its nose up, putting on airs.

There had been no time for anything else.  There had only been time—

An air patrol was sent to look; after three days, someone spotted the plane from the ground, from an observatory on top of the mountain. 
A mountaintop: somewhere between.

I wonder if he saw a gray Cessna 172, which it was, or a sleigh on its annual southern pilgrimage, which it had been.

Was it less tragic because of the costumes, because Santa crashing into a mountain does not really kill Santa?  The institution carries on, after all: a holiday can’t be usurped by thinking too much of those who play its roles. 

See:
Beneath beard, epoxy and acne.  Chapped lips.
Under the red suit trimmed in white, a body turned blue, fallible flesh. 
See?

A wrapped gift hides its contents, keeps us safe from knowing.  The snowbound boughs of unlit pines offered shelter.  Past’s present was no future, so that Christmas might still be salvaged from its wreckage.