The Great Christmas Caper
written by: David McLain
I was twelve years old the year that we pulled off the great Christmas caper, the Holiday Heist, as it were. In retrospect, it seems like the perfect age for it, the way that ten seems like the perfect age for a camping trip, or sixteen seems like the perfect age to fall in love for the first time. I remember it was about five years after my mother split, but before my dad met Roy, so it was a tough time for us. We were living in a three-bedroom apartment on the crappy side of town that we could just barely afford. Dad was working as the foreman on the first shift at a local company that made razor blades, a job that suited his temperament about as well as pants suited a dog. It’s one advantage, as far as I can remember, was that if my dad fired up his car exactly at the end of his shift, he could then barrel down the highway and pick up my little sister at the bus stop with about thirty seconds to spare. The car, a hand-me-down 1963 Volkswagen Beetle that Dad had inherited from his mother, was perpetually on the verge of breaking down. It was a fact of life which must have been frustrating for my father. His alternatives for getting my sister in the event of a catastrophic engine failure were pretty poorly thought out.
All in all, things were pretty tough, but we usually had a pretty good Christmas. I got a pretty nice bike one year; Kelsey got a fancy Victorian dollhouse that she still has to this day. We got nice things on Christmas morning, and then Dad would make pancakes and bacon, after which we would head over to my Aunt Judy’s house and spend the afternoon with my cousins.
In a game of chess, a king never moves, but has all of the power. That was how it was with my Aunt Judy. It was true that my Uncle Matt was the primary breadwinner, everybody in town had seen his tacky commercials wedged between the weather report and Wheel of Fortune. Anyone in town who had ever driven a Toyota had probably driven it off Uncle Matt’s lot, but it was Aunt Judy who was behind the scenes, pulling the strings. If you wanted to get Matt to take out an ad on the side of the local hockey rink, you talked to Aunt Judy. If you needed to hold a fundraiser for the local orchestra, you talked to Aunt Judy. And of course, when you needed a big house to throw a party in, Aunt Judy was going to make sure it was at her house. I don’t think that Aunt Judy had been inside our house for years, she would have deemed it beneath her. My father loved and loathed his sister in a similar manner to the way that I love and loath my own these days, and he normally would only call Aunt Judy to pick Kelsey up off the bus after to checking with the Devil to see if he could do it first.
It was on a particular day in early December when I came marching home from Middle School to find Kelsey and Aunt Judy on the porch of the duplex our apartment was in. I’m sure Judy had a key, but they were waiting on the porch. Aunt Judy wasn’t going in there unless the building was on fire, and she needed to rescue our cat, and there were TV cameras nearby. I remember my sister Kelsey was wearing a white knit cap and had been outside long enough to make her nose turn red, which made her look a little like a snowman whose face had been garnished by a Maraschino cherry.
“Hi Phil,” Aunt Judy chirped, with just enough faux cheerfulness to keep my sister from feeling awkward.
“Phillip,” I insisted. I was going through a phase where my full name was important. (Dad had taken the Beetle to a mechanic whose name was Phil, and who had made a point of how he had both his name and my name stitched on his shirt. I had resolved that I would be Phillip from then on.)
“Phillip,” Aunt Judy corrected. “I had to get your sister off the bus. Your dad’s car got a flat.”
“He’s been meaning to get new tires,” I agreed.
“He should be here shortly,” Aunt Judy explained with considerably less cheerful veneer than she had the first time.
“O.K.,” I nodded.
“I had to cancel my meeting with the ladies’ auxiliary to come and get Kelsey,” Aunt Judy complained. (So help me god, she actually went to something called the ladies’ auxiliary. I have no idea what they were auxiliary to, probably the Green Berets.) “Your Dad should be here any minute.”
The fact that Aunt Judy had made two references to ‘Dad being home any minute’ was something even my nine-year-old sister could pick up on. “Do you want to build a snowman?” Kelsey asked, looking at me.
“In a minute,” I replied. “I see Dad coming up the road.”
My earliest memory of the Blue Beetle was from when I was about five, when my father was taking it in for repair, because it was “broken”. Whatever it was that was actually wrong with it, I never found out. I remember I asked Dad if the car was broken, how come it was still running. Dad said he sprayed it with some magic stuff that made the car work for a few minutes. I asked Dad if that was the case, then why didn’t he just spray the car with it all the time. He didn’t answer but gave me the dirtiest look I’ve ever seen. Now, it was six and a half years later, and Dad must have had that magic spray in the glove compartment, because it was the only thing that was holding the car together. Dad pulled into our driveway, which was really just two fifty-pound bags of gravel spread in a square about the size of a station wagon. Dad got out of the car with a smile and was met with a big hug from my sister and I and a dirty look from my Aunt Judy.
“Hi!” Dad yelled. He looked at us when he talked, but his tone indicated the greeting was actually directed by my aunt. His voice had an embarrassed quality, like a man who had just been caught eating a bag of Oreos just before dinner.
“Hello,” Aunt Judy replied. Her voice sounded as warm as the snow on the roof.
“Thanks,” Dad said, looking up at his sister with a warm expression that she was never going to return. Dad probably wanted to say more, but the words probably saw my Aunt’s stare and retreated back down his esophagus.
“You’re Welcome,” Aunt Judy replied, making the word welcome sound like a Norwegian Death Curse. She turned and looked at my sister and I, and her veneer of cheerfulness returned. “How would you two like to come over for pizza on Saturday?” she asked. We said that would be great, and just like that, my father had an engagement on Saturday Night that he almost certainly didn’t want to go to.
I should probably mention in here that there was always one Christmas present for each of us that my dad was always especially interested in. It was always something small, but very thoughtful. Something that showed he was particularly in tune with the little world that we were inhabiting. We were thoughtless kids- most children are- and we usually said ‘thanks,’ and then turned our attention to the bigger ticket items under the tree. I know now that those little, thoughtful things, the ones we tended to ignore, those were the ones that Dad bought. The bigger, nicer ones, those came from Aunt Judy. How this fact would reshape our lives would come to fruition, starting with pizza at Aunt Judy’s on Saturday Night.
A night at my aunt’s house usually involved pizza (the one food all five kids would eat) and playing hide and seek (the one game all five of us would play. My cousins, Gary, Winnie, and Jennifer, were all younger than me, so this was good for them, and I was willing to play along. My Aunt had one of those split-level ranch houses that they built in the suburbs of my hometown. There were a number of clever nooks and hideaways where you could tuck yourself away, and it would usually keep us busy for the better part of an hour.
At twelve, I had reached an age when hide and seek was a little more challenging than it had once been, and I was confined to primarily hiding in closets. About the third round, I took to hiding under the dining room table. It was probably a poor choice, either my sister Kelsey or my cousin Jennifer would only have to bend over slightly to spot me. Dad and Aunt Judy, having reached their adult height, didn’t notice me when they came in from the living room to work on the dishes.
“I was thinking they could use a computer,” My aunt suggested.
For those of you under the age of twenty, I will clarify that this was a BIG DEAL. My cousins had an Apple II, which my uncle Matt guarded slightly more zealously than his bank account. Still, on one occasion, I had been allowed to play a game called Oregon Trail. For those of you under the age of 30, let me explain that Oregon Trail was a video game in which you traded goods during pioneer days, shot the mighty buffalo, and occasionally died of dysentery. Now, I think my own kids would rather have dinner with the Donner party than play a game of Oregon Trail, but to me, it was an epic saga that rivaled Gilgamesh for its historical importance. The thought of being able to Wagon Train across the west whenever I wanted to was enough to make my ears perk up.
“Not right now,” My Dad replied to my aunt. “Maybe for Phil’s birthday.”
Judy looked at her brother and frowned. “O.K.,” she muttered awkwardly. “What about Kelsey? Maybe she would like a dollhouse, with a bunch of accessories. She’s getting bigger too, maybe I could by her a new dress.”
My Dad didn’t say anything. I couldn’t see from under the table, but I suspect that the look on his face was that of a man in court waiting for his sentence to be handed down. To everyone who has ever seen A Christmas Carol, I can tell you that in real life, it’s not Ebeneezer Scrooge who hates Christmas. On the contrary, real-life Scrooges love Christmas. They love the fact that they can look generous by handing out wrapped boxes one day out of the year. They smile, and they’re magnanimous, and then the moment that December 26th rolls around, they go back to penny pinching and interest charging and every other sneaky thing they do to keep their bank accounts padded. Bob Cratchett, on the other hand, Bob Cratchett with too little money and too many children, he feels Christmas like it’s a cancer. My dad was a Bob Cratchett, and he had all the Christmas he could handle.
“Why are you doing this?” My father asked his sister.
My Aunt Judy’s blue eyes stared passed her feathered blonde hair and straight into my father’s soul. “I am doing this because I want your children to have a nice Christmas,” she explained through teeth that could have stopped a bullet.
From under the table, I caught a glimpse of my father smiling bitterly. “You want my kids to have a good Christmas,” he replied, “And they do. Every year.”
When rich people can’t get what they want by writing a check, they tend to get hostile, and pretty quickly. “Well, what do you expect? Judy asked angrily. “Do you think I could let them go without Christmas time? They’re my own niece and nephew, and lord knows you can’t-”
“Do you know what I got Phillip for Christmas last year?” Dad asked. “I got him a hat, and a shirt. He was super-excited about baseball, so I got him a New York Yankees hat and Jersey. A real hat, not an adjustable one, and a real jersey. I even had his name put on the back. I worked overtime on a Saturday night, so I had enough money. You bought him a bike. The first day the snow melted, he put the hat on, and rode the bike down to the park. Only the bike came back.”
It was true. The Christmas before, I was obsessed with the Yankees, and Dad had done his best to make me look like a part of the team. I lost the hat riding through the park, just like Dad said, but so help me, to this day I still have the jersey.
Judy stared at my father and shook her head, clearly at a loss for words. “Bobby, I don’t know-”
“You like making the grand gesture,” Dad observed. “You like to sweep in, and make a wonderful moment, and I scrimp and save and do my best to keep the heat on, and every year I look like a fool.”
My aunt stood there, stock still, apparently under the mistaken apprehension that if you couldn’t come up with a good retort, then the least you could do was to imitate a Greek statue. Finally, Judy mumbled, “They’re good kids, Bobby,” in a tone that definitely acknowledged a certain level of defeat.
“They are,” Dad agreed. “Sis, if you want to do something really nice for them, put a little money away for college. Make sure that they don’t end up with a life like mine. I’d like that. Let me be Santa. It might mean the kids learn a hard lesson, but I’d like to get through the 25th of December without feeling two inches tall.”
It was around this time that my cousin Jennifer found me, and I had to come out of hiding. The rest of the night went more or less how you would expect, or how I would have expected at the time. Naturally, there was absolutely no way my Aunt Judy was going to take this lying down. To her, the idea of ruining Christmas in order to save my father’s pride was absolutely inexcusable. What she would do about it, and how she would deal with my father, were questions that she would have to dwell on.
As for me, you might think that I would empathize with the difficult life my father had been living, and how much he had been struggling to take care of us, and I have to tell you- you’d be dead wrong. This was serious. I had the chance to play Oregon Trail in my own home. There was too much at stake here. My Aunt’s interest and mine lay along the same lines, which we would discuss the next time we met. When we did, it was Kelsey, my sister, little Kelsey, who would serve as inspiration.
About a week later, Dad had to work overtime. Christmas was looming, and he needed to make a little extra. This time, Aunt Judy jumped at the chance to pick us up. When I arrived home, Aunt Judy and my sister were sitting in the living room. Aunt Judy had, and I still can’t believe it to this day, had actually used her key to let herself into our house and had walked in the front door.
“Hi,” Judy greeted me with a kind of honest enthusiasm that I tended to associate with pretty much anyone other than her. “Come on in, sit down.”
I plopped on down next to my sister, who was already there. We looked at each other quickly. I could tell we were in for some kind of talk.
“I wanted to talk to the two of you,” Aunt Judy explained. “About Christmas.”
“OK,” I agreed.
“For starters,” Judy began, “I always buy most of your Christmas presents.”
There was an awkward pause.
“We know,” Kelsey agreed. The tone of Kelsey’s voice implied that she was thinking the same thing I was- that this was the single most obvious thing my aunt could have said.
“You do?” Judy asked, clearly surprised. It was apparently not obvious to her.
“Last year Santa brought me a coat that you had me try on at the store,” Kelsey reminded her.
“That’s true,” Judy agreed.
“One year you hired a salesman from Uncle Matt’s car dealership to play Santa,” I added. “He played Santa in the ads, too.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Judy complained.
“Once, when I was little, you came by with the Christmas presents the day before Christmas came. You said that Santa couldn’t find our house, and he asked you to deliver the presents in your Corolla,” Kelsey remembered.
“OK!” Judy objected. “All right! Every year I buy your Christmas presents, and I’m not very good at hiding it! Except this year, your father doesn’t want me to.”
I, of course, already knew this, but to my sister, it was big news. “Why not?” Kelsey asked.
“Because,” Judy paused. I could tell she wasn’t sure how much, or how little, she was at liberty to say. “Because when you’re a kid, Christmas is this wonderful, magical time of year, but when you’re an adult, it’s a struggle. And your dad struggles so hard, all of the time. I think he would love to give you everything you want at Christmas, and the fact that I do it for him just breaks his heart.”
I nodded. I felt like I should have said ‘I’m sorry,’ but I didn’t really know why. Instead, I looked at my aunt and said, “So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know!” My aunt admitted. “I just want to be able to buy you guys some nice things and not have my brother freak out about it.”
“Well,” Kelsey suggested. “You could always tell him that the presents came from Santa.”
And that, was exactly what we did.
***
It’s a difficult thing to convince a grown man that Santa Claus is real.
The first thing we had to do was recruit our crew: My cousin Gary was in the AV club. He was a year younger than me, wore thick glasses, and was the person everyone in the family called to hook up their stereo.
My cousin Winnie had just turned ten. She was class president and would go on to become our town representative in the state assembly.
Jennifer, the youngest, was only five. She had a face like an angel that no one could say no to. And of course, we had Aunt Judy, Kelsey, and I.
It was on the next pizza night that my aunt would explain the plan. “In order to do this, we’re going to have to do it late at night, after everyone’s in bed.
“Not a creature was stirring,” my sister added.
“Right,” Judy agreed. Furthermore, we’re going to have to move all the presents into the house in a matter of seconds, just like Santa would. Not only that, we’ll need to give the impression that Santa’s been there, and we’ll need to make sure your dad gets that.”
“How are you going to do that?” My cousin Gary asked.
“We are going to do it by planning everything, right down to the last detail,” my aunt clarified. “Let me explain.”
The plan was simple. Judy would load up her Corolla with Christmas Presents, she would then drive it over to our neighborhood, parking it in the parking lot of the Pizza place behind our house. Once there, Judy would give me the signal by honking the horn three times. I would proceed downstairs, unlocking the back door to the house. Judy, having stuffed all of the presents, Santa Claus style, into an enormous bag, would proceed towards the back of the house. My cousin Gary, meanwhile, would move into position directly below my father’s window, carrying his boom box. My cousin Jennifer would go with him, carrying a set of Jingle Bells that she had gotten from a set of children’s toy instruments. My sister would then sneak up into our attic. My cousin Winnie would then run around to the front of the house.
With everyone in place, we would put the plan into action: First, I would signal everyone by turning the light in my room on and off three times. Then, from her position in the attic, my sister would make clip-clop noises above my father’s bedroom, just like a group of reindeer landing on the roof of the house. Then, Gary, sitting behind underneath my father’s bedroom, would play Jingle Bells on the boom box, which my cousin Jennifer would accompany with her actual jingle bells. Finally, Winnie would knock on the door, loudly, drawing my father out of bed. My father, hearing the door, would go downstairs, to answer it. He would walk past the tree in the dining room, seeing it was as he left it. Heading to the front door, he would open it to find no one there, and with any luck, take a momentary step outside. This would give my aunt a few seconds to put the bag of presents into place. With any luck, my father, having seen the presents magically appear under the tree and having just heard the sounds of Christmas, would have no choice but to conclude that the presents had been dropped off by none other than Santa Claus himself.
“I don’t see why I have to play Jingle Bells,” Gary complained.
“It’s traditional,” my aunt sighed.
“I think it would be better if I played something cool,” Gary suggested. “Like the theme to Doctor Who.”
My aunt looked so angry, I thought she might start grunting. “Doctor Who does not bring Christmas Presents!” she grumbled.
“He could always start,” Gary suggested.
My cousin Winnie gave her mother a friendly look. “We’ve got this, Mom,” she chimed in encouragingly. “Let me get some paper. I’ll write everything down.”
So, we had a plan. Was it going to go off without a hitch? Of course not. My aunt was working with five kids under the age of thirteen. We would be lucky if we didn’t set the apartment on fire. Still, we had to give it a try.
***
The night of Christmas Eve came. My sister and I were so excited we could hardly sleep, which just made it seem to my father that we were excited about presents.
“Remember, Santa won’t come until you’re asleep,” my father told my sister as he tucked her in.
“I know,” my sister replied, but we knew that sleep had nothing to do with it.
At eleven o’clock, I heard my father go to bed. I got up and stared at the back window. Sure enough, there was my aunt’s minivan sitting in the parking lot of the pizza place behind our house. The fix was in. I got up and checked the door to my father’s room. The lights were off. I went to my sister’s room and woke her up.
“Operation Kringle is a go,” I whispered.
My sister nodded and got up. We stopped in the hallway and pulled down the ladder to the attic. Kelsey stared up at the attic, wide-eyed. “Go on,” I whispered.
In the light of day, the idea of sneaking up into the attic had seemed like a clever idea. Now, in the dead of night, my sister rightly saw heading up that ladder as the opening scene of a horror movie.
“I vote no,” Kelsey blurted out.
“But this is your job,” I replied.
“I vote so much no,” Kelsey insisted.
At this point, my sister’s asthma kicked into high gear, or maybe it was just a panic attack. At any rate, I could see her point. Truth be told, the reason I hadn’t volunteered for this part of the mission in the first place was that I thought it was creepy. “All right,” I gave in. I went to give the signal, which was supposed to be me turning the lights on and off in my room three times, but in the darkness and with my sister wheezing, I panicked and turned the lights in the hallway three times, which would have been visible from the crack under my father’s door.
“Let’s go into my room and look for Gary,” I suggested. Back in my room, my sister sat down on my bed and waited for her wheezing to subside. I opened my window and looked out on the back lawn, where I saw my cousin Gary holding his boom box under one arm and trudging through the snow. He looked up at me and smiled.
“You ready?” I asked.
“You bet I am!” Gary shouted, and he pressed the play button on the tape player.
Now, Gary would insist for decades afterward that what happened next was a total accident, but I still remember the look on his face. What happened next was a pause, while we listened to the leader tape, after which the theme from Doctor Who blared from the speakers.
“Gary!” I shouted. “That’s supposed to be Jingle Bells!”
“Sorry! Gary yelled, but he held the boom box over his head like his teenage girlfriend had just broken up with him, and he was trying to win her back.
I didn’t have time to reflect on the sudden change in demigods until later. “I’ll unlock the back door!” I shouted back.
My sister and I bolted downstairs, where I unlocked the door. ‘WE CAN STILL GET BACK ON TRACK,’ I told myself. As I opened the door, I saw my aunt running through the backyard, a giant bag of presents over her shoulder, and my other cousins in tow.
“Come on!” I shouted, and that was when I heard it- the sound of my father’s footsteps coming downstairs. “He’s coming down!”
I called out in an exaggerated stage whisper to my aunt. I became aware that Kelsey had suction cupped herself to my side. “We need to hide,” I suggested. “Now!”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a ‘count to ten, ready or not here I come’ kind of situation. I stuffed my sister into the back closet and hid myself behind the kitchen door. I heard my father make his way to the foot of the stairs. Taking slow steps, he turned and made his way into the kitchen. My father was just inches from my face. There was nothing that was keeping him from finding me, apart from the kitchen door and a vague belief that I was supposed to be upstairs in bed.
At this point, there was some kind of noise outside that I wouldn’t have been able to explain. I know now that this was my cousin Winnie. She had been walking around to the front of the house and had tripped over a large stone in the front yard. It had been covered by the snow, and in the dark she hadn’t seen it. She was now sitting in the front yard, weeping softly. That part of our plan had failed. My father clearly heard it too and started to head for the front door. In another moment, the whole thing would be shot.
Suddenly, my sister stepped out of the closet. How she knew what to do, I don’t know. She seemed guided by some unknown force. Stepping boldly into the kitchen, she looked at my father and called out, “Dad?”
My Dad spun around. “Kelsey? Are you all right?”
“I-I can’t sleep,” Kelsey stammered. “I miss Mom.”
As soon as the words came out of my sister’s mouth, I realized she was telling the truth. We would have given all the presents under the tree to have Mom back home with us.
I heard my dad pick Kelsey up. From my position behind the door, I couldn’t see her, but I could tell that my dad was hugging her as tightly as he could.
“I just miss her,” Kelsey admitted. “I miss her so much.”
“I know,” Dad agreed. “I do too.”
“Do you think she’ll ever come back?” Kelsey asked.
“She’ll come back for you,” Dad insisted. “Someday.”
There might be someone out there who might be curious about where our mother had gone and why. Let me tell you, it doesn’t make any difference. In the years since I have talked to my sister about this, and we both agree: When you’re a kid, it doesn’t matter if your parents are up on the moon fighting aliens. The only thing that manners is that they are gone.
“Come on,” my dad said to my sister. “Let’s get you to bed.”
My dad walked past me carrying my sister. They slowly walked up the stairs. My sister looked at me and winked. The caper was back on.
Quickly, I ran out the door. My aunt was still standing in the backyard in the snow. She was holding the enormous bag of presents in one hand and was holding my cousin Jennifer in the other. Jennifer, for one reason or another, had never rung her Christmas bell.
“The coast is clear!” I shouted. “Come on!”
Aunt Judy blew past me with the giant bag. Inside of two minutes, the presents were under the tree. We had done it; we had pulled it off. It was like a magic trick. The caper was-
“Judy!” my father called from upstairs. “Your daughter is sitting outside in the snow.”
For some reason, my cousin Jennifer took this moment to shake her jingle bells.
Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in the dining room, opening our Christmas presents. My cousin Winnie was sitting with her leg propped up, resting underneath a bag of frozen peas. Kelsey and I were admiring both our new Apple II, and the user’s guide for Oregon Trail.
“Did I hear the Doctor Who theme at one point?” Dad asked.
“Absolutely!” Gary agreed.
“Does the Doctor deliver Christmas presents?” Dad asked.
“I think maybe he does,” Kelsey replied.
“I just wanted to make sure that the kids have a good Christmas,” my aunt explained.
“I know,” my dad agreed. “I know. I just wanted everyone to know how hard I’m trying. I guess I was being selfish.”
My sister gave my dad a hug. “It doesn’t matter if you bought the presents. What matters is you’re here.”
There was a knock at the door. My father went over and opened it up. On the other side, there was a tall man about my father’s age standing on the other side, He had gray hair, thick glasses, and a surprisingly carefree smile.
“Hi, my name’s Roy,” Roy greeted my father. I’m sorry to bother you so late, but I was just visiting my sister next door, and I noticed the lights were on in the Beetle in the driveway.”
“Oh,” Dad said. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Roy replied. “It would be a shame to wake up to a dead battery. It’s such a nice-looking car.”
This caught everyone’s attention. We loved the Beetle, but no one was going to describe it as ‘nice looking.’ It was old, and rusty, and had dents in it. Any used car salesman would have recognized this as too outrageous a lie to tell. Slowly, we all stepped out onto the porch. I could hardly believe it. The lights were on, but this was less noticeable than the fact that the Beetle had been completely restored. It looked like she had just rolled out of the factory. There wasn’t a scratch on her. I knew that when Dad started it was going to run like it was brand new. Not only that, but it was now a shiny deep blue.
My Dad opened the car door and sat down in it. He turned the lights off. There, sitting on the passenger’s seat beside him, was a silver sonic screwdriver, made popular by a certain time-traveling alien. It was sitting next to a solitary jingle bell.
My father looked over at his sister and grinned. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”
I looked at my aunt. “You didn’t get the car painted, did you?”
“No,” Aunt Judy answered.
- The Great Christmas Caper - December 19, 2025
