I’ve always thought that eating breakfast with Santa was perfectly normal. He would come to my church in Western New York every year and sit in the corner of the reception hall for a few hours. (Sometimes his father or cousin Frank played him.) The kids ate pancakes and drank hot chocolate in front of him to build up their courage. Whenever I felt ready, I could meet with a great person and discuss anything I needed. And they’ll get candy canes.
Random adult members of the congregation sometimes join in, usually because they know the man under the beard and had no complaints about the hot breakfast. Everything was very casual. So when I told my mom this year that my favorite minor league baseball team, the Brooklyn Cyclones, was planning a Breakfast with Santa event at their Coney Island stadium, I knew it was a big deal. I didn’t think it would happen. And that he was planning to go. She is the woman to this day who has never admitted to me or my siblings that Santa doesn’t exist (he finally left us his resignation letter last year). I thought she would be happy about this and say something like, “It’s fun!” Instead, she looked at me with concern and she said, “It’s really not appropriate to go there without kids.”
Really? It’s not inappropriate to go to the Brooklyn Cyclones stadium. other There are times when there are no children, but will they be banned as soon as Santa arrives? I found myself asking friends and people at work if it was okay for me to go. And then I received a second surprise. Many people in my life had never even heard of Breakfast with Santa. “Perhaps it’s something in the Rust Belt or the North?” one person suggested. Pancakes and Santa? Regional?regional and Only children?
I contacted a Santa Claus expert, Jacqueline Woolley, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, in hopes of finding some corroboration. At the time, he was preparing for a conference on Santa. She had never heard of having breakfast with Santa. “When you mentioned it, I looked it up online and apparently it’s been around for years,” she told me.
It’s done all over the country and I love it. But I’m going through a small personal crisis right now.i don’t think I’m what one of my friends calls a “Christmas adult,” a seasonal version of the so-called Disney adult who is obsessed with Magic Kingdom. I guess I’m just a woman who enjoys a special little outing at Christmas. So this year, I decided to ignore my loved ones and go eat breakfast with Santa alone. The idea was to revisit a childhood tradition in an adult mind to see if it still endures and if it feels “inappropriate” to participate. (Here’s an idea: pancakes atlantic) Can you make a case for having breakfast with Santa for everyone, not just the kids?
To maximize the intensity of this experience, I chose to have breakfast with Santa on the 6th floor of Macy’s, the famous department store in midtown Manhattan. Probably the birthplace of Manhattan. modern concept One-on-one interaction with Santa Claus (and a set with Santa Claus) Miracle on 34th Street, a charming but ultimately sinister film about a man who manipulates his mother into leaving her luxurious Manhattan apartment and moving to Long Island). Breakfast was $75 for him, but if you wanted a window seat it was $85. I made a reservation for Saturday morning at 8:30am.
As a child, I couldn’t think in too many words that Santa was an adult and a stranger; and Celebrities. Most normal people don’t feel comfortable walking into a new room and immediately approaching someone to ask for something. The idea of breakfast is to have a longer celebration and have enough time to adapt to your surroundings and the task at hand before executing. “Santa isn’t just a stranger,” child psychologist and author Carla Goodwin pointed out when I asked her this question. From a child’s perspective, he Also Strangers potentially criticizing them.
Goodwin takes her children to breakfast with Santa at a hotel in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Even if the kids aren’t looking forward to seeing Santa, they can say, ‘Okay, then we’ll have pancakes.’ That might be what motivates them.” ” And while they are eating pancakes, Santa is just walking around, so you get a chance to meet Santa before you talk to him. This strategy is not without risks, but it should take some pressure off. If your kids are already starting to wonder if Santa is real, they might wonder if Santa is having breakfast with them at a random hotel in Virginia. .
This is not a problem for me. Because if the real Santa is going to eat breakfast somewhere, Macy’s in New York City actually makes sense. But thinking about pancakes helped me get out the door. To avoid seeming too hot, I wore a black turtleneck and a brown skirt that reached my ankles. This is one of the most gruesome outfits ever worn to Breakfast with Santa. On my way to Manhattan, I watched a YouTube video of a previous breakfast with Santa at Macy’s to see if anyone was eating alone. The answer was no.
Naturally, I was seated between two families with young children. The girl to my right was wearing the same red dress as her sister (classic) and was trying to eat the whole butterball in the middle of the table (also classic). Her three beautiful carolers, in chic little white jackets, red gloves, and full stage makeup, came and gathered at our table to sing “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” ” was sung. they were great. I thought they must be some of the hardest working women in New York show business. Dining at Macy’s singing from one end of her room to the other, only to come back and come back again.
As I was sorting through a basket full of mini pastries in the middle of the table, a woman in a suit came over and bent down to my sitting level. “Are you ready to meet Santa?” she asked me. She was very happy that she expressed it that way. “To see Santa?” I said stupidly. “No, actually, it’s not ready yet.” A few minutes later, the waiter brought me coffee and asked, “Have you seen Santa yet?” Even though the kids weren’t close enough to hear our conversation, I respected everyone’s efforts to talk to me about Santa as if he were really there.
“Even if you’re not a Christian, we all assume that Santa Claus is a real person,” says co-author Talia Goldstein, an associate professor at George Mason University. 2016 survey Mr. Woolley told me about his belief in Santa Claus. (There is a wealth of academic research going back to ancient times regarding the psychology of Santa Claus. At least in the 1970s.) Goldstein described Santa Claus as a type of “cultural make-believe” in which both children and adults participate. Like the Macy’s experts, she argued: everyone It casually mentions Santa as a basic fact of the world. (This reminds me that when I texted my friend to ask if she wanted to go have breakfast with Santa, she didn’t say, “No, Santa Claus isn’t real.” , “You can’t interact with Santa.”) (Because she’s Jewish.)
“We adults enjoy this tradition, too,” I echoed Goldstein’s point, and Woolley agreed. I then mentioned that I was understandably wary of being thought of as a weirdo by attending breakfast with Santa alone. (Of course, the worst thing about going against your mother is the possibility that she might be right.) Casually mentioning Santa as if it were real, or There is a thin but bright line between implying that something is completely acceptable behavior. Even more worrying acts, such as hanging stockings on the mantelpiece in the apartment, which seem unable to give up on him wholeheartedly (“Adult Christmas”). Woolley confessed that as a Santa Claus expert with excellent academic affiliations, he was once asked to appear in a Macy’s advertising campaign promoting belief in Santa Claus. They just wanted her to say, “I believe in Santa Claus,” but she told them no. “I couldn’t let that happen,” she said. She didn’t want to lie on TV. She said it seemed weirder than lying to her own children.
Luckily I wasn’t on TV. Also most of the time no one cares what you are doing and I was enjoying myself. After eating pancakes, mimosas, two coffees, four or five tater tots, two sausages, scrambled eggs, and a small yogurt parfait, I was full and ready to meet Santa. The allotted breakfast time was 1 hour for her and 3 minutes for him, so we flagged down the waiter and asked if it was too late. He went looking for the manager. he texted nervously. Finally, a woman in a suit came back to pick me up and escorted me to Santa’s corner. “Have fun,” she said, not rudely, as she deposited me in line. “Are you next in the family?” asked a woman dressed as an elf. (The whole time I was there they treated me like a whole family of 4, which is why they provided me with so much food.)
Santa and I had a warm and brief interaction. We took a photo together. He asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I said, “Oh, world peace,” and he said, “You have to find it in your own heart.” This didn’t make any sense, but it was just right. I have new Christmas memories. It was an absurd conversation with a man with a fake beard who was probably younger than me. Nevertheless, its presence added a whisper of magic to the experience of an otherwise ordinary breakfast and his otherwise sombre December day.
