Canto CCCLXIII: Cul-De-Sac Santo Claus

Gentle cabrones:

It had to have been 2001 — I’m sure of the date for many reasons.

It wasn’t 2000, because the Orange County Register story about the posadas on my Anaheim street didn’t mention my Mami – keep that article in mind for a future canto. It couldn’t have been 2002, because I wasn’t going out with ! anymore – keep her in mind for a future canto. 

For a few years, my neighborhood held a posada, the Latin American reenactment of Joseph and a pregnant Mary looking for lodging in Bethlehem. We lived in a multicultural American dream. Mexican. White – and not just boring white but ethnic white. Argentinian, Peruvian. Chicano. Vietnamese. With a bunch of kids. And parents who cared about community.

Of course it would get newspaper coverage, especially when the resident Mexican with glasses on the street was starting out in the business.

I cannot remember how it started, but in 2000, the parents decided they wanted to get the block together for a posada. We were all Catholic or Catholic adjacent, so we could recite some of the traditional hymns. But we were Americans, so we could also sing “Jingle Bells” and “Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer.”

The kids were the perfect age range for this – from toddler up to nine, which was the age of my brother at the time. They dressed up in homemade robes and angel wings, and went from house to house. At the end were my mami’s buñuelos, chow mein from Gia’s wife, pozole and ponche and more that I’ve forgotten. But we weren’t just Catholic – we were all-American. So who was gonna be Santa Claus?

In 2000, it was the brother-in-law of Ed, the Cajun who lived down the street and was a great mechanic. His brother-in-law, Craig, lived in a school bus that was parked in Ed’s backyard and he was the inaugural Santa Claus complete with driving down the street to the end of our cul-de-sac in his roaring Harley.

I’m not sure why he didn’t do it in 2001. But there still was gonna be a Santo Claus — not Santa Claus, because we said it in Spanish, and male saints get the -o prefix in Spanish, you know? — and Craig was still going to transport Santo Claus on his Harley because you need to use a Harley when you have a Harley. Like Chekov’s gun, you know?

Ed’s house was on the corner across the street from my comadre Angela. The Harley came roaring down from there, Santo Claus on the back. “Ho, ho, ho!” she said in the chilly night, and the kids went crazy.

It was my Mami.

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I should’ve written this post last year, because we Americans like our anniversaries in intervals of five and 10 years. Well, it’s been six years since I joined the Los Angeles Times – and I will always remember this anniversary easily for two reasons.

I joined in the last pay period of 2018, which meant there was really nothing to do in the last two weeks of 2018, and yet I did things.

My L.A. Times run has exceeded my expectations, and then some. Politicians toppled. Part of a Pulitzer. Comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable. Why, just yesterday, I was stopped by three people, young and middle-aged and old, in downtown L.A. who knew who I was because of my columnas — damn.

When I joined the Times, it was holiday season. The last Christmas we had my Mami.

I have not been able to enjoy a Christmas ever since, and I don’t think I every possibly can again. It’s a selfish stance, because everyone else around me loves the holiday, but it’s my stance, damnit.

And yet…

As I go to holiday parties and gorge at potlucks and see people give gifts and see all the holiday displays, I always think back to 2001 and my Mami as Santo Claus.

She didn’t grow up with Saint Nick in Mexico – December in the ranchos of Zacatecas is for La Virgen de Guadalupe, posadas, Nochebuena, and the gifts don’t come until El Día de los Reyes Magos. She always set up a Christmas tree at home, but her joy was setting up a nativity scene, because she was a woman of faith and that’s the ultimate reason for the season, although she never liked the small porcelain statue of a reclining ape I gave her one year because she said there were no changos at the birth of Christ but I’d always say Diosito en el cielo loved all animals, you know?

I digress.

I was already in grad school in 2001. My other siblings were too old to participate in any posada. But my brother was the age where you believe in all the wonders of Christmas. And my Mami wanted her baby son and the rest of us to soak up every moment, so of course she would be Santo Claus. Mami loved her children above everything else, and the rest of the Arellano kids loved Christmas.

She was a great Santa. Full red and white outfit. Cap. Beard and mustache. Boots. Mami gave out bolo — small gifts of candy and peanuts and change, per posadas tradition — from her red sack. Maybe some other gifts. Us older kids stared in appreciation. My Tía María was there (Canto CXL), and squeezed the cheek of !, who was thoroughly impressed at what rancho libertarians could do with community.

It was the year of 9/11, and this nation was gearing up for war, and yet everything in the world was holy and good. It was not going to last, of course.

I think there was one more posada after that, and there was no Santa. After that, the kids were too old to dress in handmade robes and angel’s wings. No new kids replaced them. Neighbors moved away — now, there’s only four families left from that time. Most of the people left are renters and keep to themselves. It’s now all Latino save for one household.

If I wanted to get despondent about what was lost from those days, I easily could. But when I make the u-turn at the end of the cul-de-sac to park every time I visit, I always remember Santa Mami. Even back then, when I thought she’d live well into her 80s and I could move her and my dad into a bigger place so they could garden all day in their old years, I knew what I was seeing was special. I’m sure there are photos somewhere of that night, but I committed myself to trying to remember as much of that night as possible.

And here I am.

Merry Christmas to all of ustedes, Christians and not. At the very least, be like Santa Mami. Selfless. Cheerful. Giving. Loving. On the back of a Harley, ready to make people’s lives wonderful for a few hours — but really, a lifetime.

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: Me flipping tortillas for the KCRW and Gustavo’s Great #TortillaTournament finale. Winner announced soon over at KCRW Insider newsletter, which you should subscribe to!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “The papers, as always, reviled me cruelly” — Tchaikovsky

LISTENING: “Star of Wonder,” Sufjan Stevens. You’ve heard one song by this indie-rock wunderkind, you’ve heard them all, right? Instruments upon instruments upon multitrack vocals to create a Midwestern Wall of Sound. My honey plays his songs during the holidays among the Muppets and Motown Christmas tracks, and this one stuck with me: the swirling synths, those overtracked dueling vocals, but really the vulnerability that the best Christmas carols express. And that four-minute ending chant — as bold and touching as the end of “Hey Jude.” I. See the stars…

READING: “The Corpse at the Iron Gate”: Included in Jon Lee Anderson’s recent, excellent-but-too-long New Yorker profile of Argentina president Javier Milei is a reference to V.S. Naipaul’s scabrous summation of Argentine machismo in the New York Review of Books, a summation so scabrous that I cannot repeat here but can say even Nericcio would blush. So OF COURSE I had to find the original article, which was par for the Roberto Bolaño’s takedown. Far better is Naipaul’s original Argentina takedown, which I share here and which prophetically explains why Milei would assume power but also reads like an analysis of Trump II.

BUY MY NEW CO-BOOK! People’s Guide to Orange County tells an alternative history of OC through the scholarship and reporting of myself, Elaine Lewinnek, and Thuy Vo Dang. There’ll be signings all year — in meanwhile, buy your copy TODAY. And, yes: I’ll autograph it!

Gustavo Events  

Jan. 4-5: This is really cool: Jouyssance, a choral group committed to singing pre-Baroque pieces (and which my sometimes-jefe, L.A. Times features editor Steve Padilla, is a member), is doing a Christmas program featuring 16th-century Mexican music — and I'm going to be the narrator! Jan. 4 will be at 7:30 p.m. at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, 6700 W. 83rd Street, Westchester; January 5 will happen at 4 p.m. at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 122 S. California Ave., Monrovia. Tickets are $25 general admission, $20 for seniors, and $10 for students with ID — buy them TODAY!

Jan. 21: Remember when I used to come out on KPCC’s AirTalk with Larry Mantle every other week to talk Orange County stuff? I do! Well, I’m taking a trip back in time for Larry’s 40th anniversary tour with a taping about OC matters at the Bowers Museum in SanTana! Going to start at 7 p.m, and tickets are FREE, but you gotta RSVP!

Gustavo in the News

“Good Food Newsletter”: KCRW legend and our comadre Evan Kleiman plugs #TortillaTournament

“Latinx Files: Muchas gracias, Jorge Ramos”: A Los Angeles Times newsletter you should subscribe to plugs a columna of mine.

“Los Angeles County Shows Why Democrats Lost”: Mother Jones quotes me on the rightward shift of Latinos in the 2024 election.

Gustavo Stories 

“Grítale a Guti”: Latest edition of my Tuesday night IG Live free-for-all.

"What’s your Best Defense of California?”: I appear on KQED’s “Forum” to talk about the segment title at hand.

“KCRW and Gustavo's Great Tortilla Tournament 2024 Corn and Flour Winners!”: Just like the title says! KEY QUOTE: “On a cold Saturday morning…somewhere in Los Angeles…the KCRW and Gustavo’s Great #TortillaTournament team filed into the casita of Good Food with Evan Kleiman’s titular host for our solemn task at hand.”

KCRW #TortillaTournament videos: Here’s the corn and flour Fuerte Four contests as shot by KCRW Good Food with Evan Kleiman producer Elina Shatkin — and with a tiebreaking vote by her for flour!

“Citrus in December is a SoCal tradition. Enjoy your harvest while you can”: My latest L.A. Times columna takes stock of two trees I must kill. KEY QUOTE: “The sight of my dying trees in the midst of flourishing ones is a reminder that we should treat citrus not as a metaphor for the California Dream but rather the fragility of it.”

You made it this far down? Gracias! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram while you’re down here by clicking on their logos down below. Don’t forget to forward this newsletter to your compadres y comadres! You can’t get me tacos anymore, but you sure as hell can give them — and more — to the O.C. Catholic Worker!