BY JAY BRYANT |  DEC 24, 2023

“Why does Santa give rich kids more presents than poor kids?” the little girl asked.

From the mouths of babes, her grandfather thought. Of course, she had no idea of the complexity of the question. He knew the answer, and he didn’t want to take too long in telling it to her, for fear she would interpret his silence, though momentary, as confirmation of her worst fears.

That had happened to him before. In the most dramatic case, a businessman had asked a question on the telephone, a question for which the answer was far more complex than the man could have known. The grandfather, not yet a grandfather then, had hesitated, and the man had interjected, “I guess your silence tells me all I need to know.” That was certainly wrong, but it didn’t matter. The man had hung up, and the grandfather knew he had lost a lot of money and a friend in those few seconds of hesitation.

“Because,” he told the little girl, “Santa isn’t dealing in things, really. He’s dealing in happiness.”

Her hesitation was not a problem. It gave him a chance to look down at her, at those huge incongruously blue eyes framed by all that dark hair. He sensed that behind those eyes a crew of highly specialized synapses was swinging into action for the first time, to unload and process a new concept, a thought sufficiently abstract to require their expert attention. Rookies at their job, they wanted to make sure they sent the right words tongueward.

She licked her upper lip, and the blue eyes squinted just a tiny fraction. “So, a poor kid,” she said, explaining his answer, asking him, really, if she understood what he had said, “that got a pair of shoes would be as happy as a rich kid that got a hundred toys.”

“More or less,” the grandfather said.

“Okay,” she said, turning away in her Christmas-dinner dress and skipping off in her patent-leather shoes, looking for cousins.

Later, alone in his basement office, the grandfather indulged himself in the thoughts he had wanted to think during the conversation, but had stifled in order to pay attention to the moment, ever so much more important than sorting all the ideas out, more important because it involved her, with a lifetime yet to make something of it, and use it to influence the lives of others, by the dozens or millions, who knew? Whereas the sorting involved only him.

He was trying to draw a line, the Proper Indulgence of the Innocence of Youth Line.

“Feed the birds,” Mary Poppins sang, “Tuppence a day.” But the movie’s ancient banker, presented as the very image of Scrooge, argued for investing the two pence in his bank, and catalogued the economic wonders that ensued from even a modest investment, the very amount, he cackled, that he had started with.

The grandfather didn’t think of himself as a scroogy geezer, but he knew the old banker’s argument was right, and that the birds would get by, whether the children fed them or not. But, of course, it wasn’t really about the birds; it was about the children. Should one deny children an innocent pleasure in order to teach a lesson in economics? But yet again, if one did not teach children economics, would they grow up ignorant, and vote for fatuous, sentimentalist economic policies that would wind up ruining the well-being of millions, as had been done in so many countries in his own lifetime?

And then a third turn of the line occurred to him. Was not the old woman selling the little two-pence packets of birdseed an entrepreneur, too, every bit as much as the equally superannuated banker?

Draw the line, Granddad, draw the line.

How much economics should a child be exposed to? How much violence? How much sex, on television and in school?

The word overprotection crawled to the top of his consciousness, and he pondered it. Today’s parents, with their high-tech car seats and safety-tested toys protected their children physically, but what protection were they providing morally, spiritually, intellectually? They wanted to protect children from tasting failure, low self-esteem and any sort of insult based on stereotype. He realized his line was zigzagging, and took only small comfort from realizing that everyone else’s was, too. The politically-correct lines zigged when his zagged, but was there a principle he could apply to show he was right and they were wrong? He was working on that problem when a call interrupted him.

“Come say good bye, Granddad, they’re leaving.”

At the top of the stairs, a pair of blue eyes, fifty-five years older than the little girl’s, but identical nonetheless, smiled at him. He put his arm around the girl’s grandmother and together they waved good-bye as the next two generations drove away.

Later, over turkey and mayonnaise sandwiches, he talked to her about Santa and happiness, and lines that zigzagged.

“You think too much,” she told him. “We turned out okay, and they’ll turn out okay. All things in their season, the good and the bad.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Well,” she said. “Once upon a time, there was this manger…”

Editor’s Note: I first met Jay Bryant and his late wife, Susan, in Illinois where I was a small-town newspaper editor. Jay was a press secretary for Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie and Susan was a political whiz practicing her craft in the state. They came to Washington shortly thereafter where Jay spent time in Republican leadership offices and Susan continued her political consulting and strategizing. Jay soon joined her in the business of campaign politics. They both gained a reputation for sterling political instincts, winning strategies and winning campaigns. They retired to North Carolina and now Jay is settled in among the vineyards at Union Grove Farm in Orange Country North Carolina, where he still practices is inspiring talent as a writer and poet.