333 333 35123.
At first glance, that might look like a phone or tracking number, but it’s not. If you say the numbers out loud, it’ll probably sound familiar.
That’s because it’s how you play “Jingle Bells” on the numbered keys of a child’s piano.
333 333 35123 is part of my earliest Christmas memory of Santa. Actually, it’s not even my memory; it was my mother’s. She talked about it so often it got mixed into my own bag of Christmas memories.
I was almost 2 when Santa brought me the tiny toy piano with numbered keys. There was barely enough money for necessities, let alone extras at Christmas, but Mom managed to scrape together enough money to buy one gift for her baby girl.
It was important to her that Santa came to our house, even if it was to leave a single present. Honestly, I don’t remember the piano, but her story became “our” story, and those numbers are seared onto my brain.
Since that Christmas — and I’m a first-wave boomer, so we’re talking nearly four score — whenever “Jingle Bells” plays, others sing the words, but I sing the numbers.
And not to brag, but I can number-sing my way through both verses. I even stomped it out once on the floor piano at FAO Schwarz.
Santa Baby
No one needs to remind me of the “reason” for the season. And the older I get, the more I do not need to be reminded.
That said, for the first 30 Christmases of my life, starting with that year of 333 333 35123, Santa Claus was a major player.
I was a firm believer until my best friend Patsy told me, on a Christmas afternoon, that the present Santa had left her under the tree was the same plastic ukulele she saw her father playing a few nights earlier when she snuck out of bed to see what that “noise” was.
Patsy and I, about 7 at the time, both said, “hmm. I wonder.”
Nothing was said at my house about it, though, because I had a younger sister who believed, so I kept on believing. Then more sisters came. And more.
As we older sisters grew up, we kept the Santa secret from the little ones. And even before my youngest sister was thinking, “hmmm. I wonder,” I had my own little boy who believed; heart and soul believed.
But, it did help that no matter where we lived during those years – Japan, New Jersey, Virginia – Santa Claus made periodic calls from the North Pole (aka, Cleveland, Ohio).
And, of course, I kept the myth rolling, easily convincing my boys that everyone’s grandpa sounded like Santa because the North Pole call was long-distance.
Then one December evening, right in the middle of my dramatic reading of “The Night Before Christmas,” our older son, who was 5, interrupted with, “I don’t believe it!”
BOOM!
That was the sound of my head exploding.
I had just recited the line: “He spoke not a word but went straight to his work and filled all the stockings and turned with a jerk. Then laying a finger to the side of his nose and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.”
And my firstborn said those words: “I don’t believe it.”
“What?” I asked calmly, forcing myself not to cry.
In a conversation etched in my brain even more deeply than 333 333 35123, he explained that nobody could lay a finger on the side of their nose and just shoot up a chimney — not even Santa.
His exact words: “He’s not magic. That part doesn’t make sense.”
That part?
But what about him bringing presents to every child? In the world. In one night?
Yep, he believed that.
And eight reindeer? That fly?
Yeah, sure, he was okay with that, too.
Whew! Christmas crisis averted.
When Santa called on Christmas Eve and asked if we’d leave him a snack, that little boy was the one who set out cookies on a plate, then raced to bed because that’s what the jolly old elf told him to do.
And we were back in the Santa game for another two years.
Our Christmases are calmer now that the big guy isn’t a significant player in our holiday picture, more adult. We had Santa back again briefly when the grandkids were small, which was as much fun as having little sister believers and our own kid believers.
I am nostalgic for those Santa years, but I have some wonderful memories. And I have never stopped believing. Ever.
Merry Christmas! And, 8 765 5432 43 32 21.*
* Follow this link to reveal the coded meaning
A former Associate Editor of the Shelter Island Reporter, Joanne Sherman has won multiple awards for her humor columns. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Southern Living, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, and other publications. She wrote a column, “Can We Talk”, in Toastmaster, a magazine for Toastmasters International, and was an award-winning humorist/commentator for WPBX radio in Southampton. She and her husband, Hoot Sherman, live on Shelter Island. To read past Off the Cuff posts, follow this link.
