A Friendly Letter

Yes, There Is A Santa Claus Archetype: I’ve Seen Him, Been Him

What kind of archetype is Santa Claus? One psychologist says he is the carrier of deep memories of “the Good Father.” Most of us, even many who had overall “bad childhoods”, can summon memories of times, moments, when a father figure was good to us: comforting, bountiful in comfort and generous in things we wanted as well as what we needed. Indeed, the rarer these occasions were, the more tenacious can be the memories.

Others note that Santa’s character accords with various ancient gods: his knowing all our “lists” of hopes; the ability to get all around the planet in a single night; even his ample belly bespeaks abundance and generosity.

Also, he is innocent; we only see him in this time of giving; he asks only that we be good, without getting very specific, or judgmental about our shortcomings. And beyond all the merchandising, we know that even tiny, homemade gifts from him can be as magical as the latest high-end gadgets. Or if we don’t know that, when we learn it, he will still be there.

My own experience this fall points to one more feature, perhaps the most marvelous in these troubled times, verified again and again: it turns out that there seems to be one white man that most black Americans do trust (maybe the only one): not me, but the Santa I have passingly embodied. If he too has “white privilege,” his mission is to give it all away, then make more, for more giving next time.

Santa-Dont-ShootSo I’ve been humbled each time by this repeated recognition: for one thing is clear to me, Chuck Fager, is that I do not live up to that Santa Claus archetype. (And I shall not impersonate it much longer: that fateful, long-delayed Monday visit to the barber, and return to incognito status, is coming again very soon.) But I’m grateful to have had the chance to see that this larger figure is still active.

More Mysterious Quakers & More Quaker Mysteries

CEF: Besides all this mystery writing, you’re clerk of Amesbury Friends Meeting, which is historic as heck, poet John Greenleaf Whittier’s home. Tell us about your Quaker pilgrimage. I’m particularly interested in hearing about Friends — present and past — who may have been particularly meaningful for you.

EM: Yes, I am clerk. I love our historic meetinghouse, which John Greenleaf Whittier helped design – he was on the building committee. I’ve been a member for twenty-six years, and until three years ago I drove from neighboring towns to Amesbury. Now I walk to Meeting on Sunday mornings, musing every single time about other Friends walking to the same Meetinghouse over the centuries. I first went to Meeting for worship in Bloomington, Indiana, and realized I’d found my spiritual home. Now Amesbury Friends are my second family.
CEF: I see that poet Whittier at least makes a cameo in your upcoming mystery, “Delivering The Truth” about Rose Carroll, a Quaker midwife in Amesbury in 1888. (Can’t wait to read that one!) Will he be back in future Rose Carroll stories?

EM: Whittier is indeed a friend and mentor to Rose, and he’s in every book.

Quakers Stand With Muslims in Carolina

Adam Beyah, a senior member of the Fayetteville mosque, sent out invitations to persons of various faiths to come and stand with Muslims there.

One invitation came to me. And I went; was proud to go. On the way there from my home in Durham, almost two hours away, I stopped at Quaker House, where I used to be Director, and helped make a stack of signs. This project turned the morning into “Flashback Friday”: dozens of times in my eleven-year tenure at Quaker House, we had made signs and posters for peace vigils and other public actions. Most of ours were printed on the office copier, on ivory paper with a black border. Plain, but (we hoped) punchy and pertinent.

This time, we weren’t organizing, just helping out. I cleared the text for the posters with Adam Beyah, to make sure they were sensitive to the group’s outlook. Then we headed out.

Outside the Fayetteville mosque, named for an African-born enslaved Muslim, an older sign above is underlined by our new sign below.
As always, we worried about the turnout: we had made about thirty signs: would enough people show up even to carry them?

We shouldn’t have worried.

Sample A Quaker Mystery: “Murder Among Friends”

Valley State College is just north of Winchester, about half a mile west of Interstate 81. The campus is compact and cozy, with nondescript red brick buildings ranged around a lush green oval lined with tall old oaks and maples.

“Welcome All‑Friends Conference,” read the hand‑painted sign at the north entrance, with a black arrow pointing toward Mott Hall for Registration.

“It was started by Quakers from Opequon Creek Meeting, in 1867,” I was telling Eddie as we turned in. “To train young women who were going South to teach former slaves. Lots of them went. After Reconstruction the meeting turned it into a normal school, for schoolteachers. It closed in the Depression, then the state picked it up.”

I pointed across the oval, toward a tree‑covered rise. “The Meetinghouse is over there, behind the trees. It goes back to before the American Revolution. Here’s Mott Hall.”

“That’s Lucretia Mott, I hope?” Eddie asked.

“Yep. This may be one of the few public buildings in the valley not named after a treasonous defender of chattel slavery or a segregationist governor. Not that I’m prejudiced about the Old Dominion. I’ll open the trunk.”

With the obligatory nametags soon pinned on our shirts, we were quickly assigned to a room on the dormitory’s third floor, and lugged our bags up the stairs.

From the doorway the room looked like an optical illusion, with two of everything: desks, beds, dressers and closets, arranged in sequence and exactly opposite each other.

I dropped my suitcase, flopped down on one of the beds and scanned the conference schedule, printed on a pink sheet in small type, while Eddie unpacked his bag. “There’s a steering committee meeting going on now, in the auditorium,” I noted. “I should get down to it, since I’m technically a member. You could come, too; it’s an open session. Hey, what’s that?”

I had glanced up and seen Eddie pulling out what looked like a sawed‑off baseball bat from his bag. He grinned and tossed it at me.

“It’s an authentic family heirloom and homophobia deflector,” he said. “Got it at a yard sale outside Pittsburgh, cost me a buck. Look on the other side.”

A Quaker Christmas Story: Candles In The Window

Christmas Eve, so called by the world’s people, was always a frantically busy time at the Woodhouse bakery. While the Woodhouse family, being Quakers, did not observe Christmas as a special day, almost all their customers did. That meant orders for dozens more pies than usual, plus hundreds of tarts and ginger cakes, and scores of extra loaves of their rich, thick bread.
So all the week before, the whole Woodhouse family were in the shop almost round the clock, mixing dough, sprinkling sugar and cinnamon, spooning out the cherry preserves, and tending the fire under the big brick ovens.
Abram did all of this, and more: he was often sent out with a basket full of pies or tarts for delivery to the better customers: beef and mincemeat pies to old Tilbury at the Golden Lion Pub beyond the square; or down the cobbles of South Street, through the narrow passage of the Ginnett and past the sturdy old Meetinghouse, with scones for the Blackburns and buns for the widow Kilburn. Sometimes he crossed the river Ribble to Giggleswick, where the vicar doted on Mother’s ginger cakes.
This evening he had been sent to the pub, where Tilbury wanted three more pies for his last round of customers, and it was from there that he had turned to climb the hill Castleberg.
Abram wouldn’t have thought of climbing Castleberg, especially in the cold, except for the candles–two in a window in every house and shop.
“What are they for, this time?” he had asked Father that morning.
“It’s a double illumination,” Father said, “for victories past and victories prayed for. George Cockburn’s troops burning Washington, DC is the victory past, and Wellington beating Napoleon before the end of 1815 is what they’re praying for.”
“That’s a fine thing to pray for, in what’s supposed to be a Christian country” his grandmother had snorted. Laying down her rolling pin, Gran had wiped sweat from her brow. “All it means is more dead soldiers, penniless widows and hungry orphans, from Paris to New York. Love thine enemies, indeed. A terrible, sinful waste.”
She sighed and picked up her rolling pin. With swift, expert strokes she flattened a thick lump of dough into delicate pie crusts. . . .