Santa Claus is Dead

Leigh Travis, Ph.D.

The big gymnasium room was bristling with over a hundred men, mostly in their 30's and 40's, and a few scattered women, seated at three long folding tables spanning the room. The men seemed angry, and were talking loudly amongst themselves, complaining bitterly to one another about how they had been "victimized" by "the system."

"Your attention, please!" a bald man with a burly body shouted from the far end of the room, "your attention, please!"

Slowly, the room came to order; the burly man took the microphone to his mouth, and shouted:

"Good evening! Before we begin our program, let me have show of hands: for how many of you is this your first time at one of our meetings?"

Most of the hands went up in the air.

"Thank you. Now, how many of you feel that you have been victimized by the system?"

Again, almost all of the hands went up in the air.

The burly man's face contorted into an ugly mask of pure contempt:

"What a bunch of whimps!"

The room went silent.

"That's right, you heard me right: you're a bunch of shit-heads: I don't feel sorry for a one of you, no matter how badly you think you've been beaten up! Why? That's what I'm here to tell you, assholes!"

Two men at the other end of the room stood, walked out in a huff, flashing the finger at the burly man, muttering under their breath.

"First," the burly man continued, "it's you who got into bed with her or decided to marry her, it's you who decided to have kids with the broad you choose to sleep with or marry: want to see who is victimizing you, here, look!"

The burly man went around the room with a hand mirror, holding it up to the faces of each of the men in the audience, returned to the rostrum, put the microphone to his mouth again:

"It's you who makes appointments to see our consultants and attorneys; it's you who decides not to show up for those appointments, or it's you who decides, at the last minute, to cancel those appointments! And there you sit, feeling sorry for yourself because you can't see your kids because 'the system' has failed you: WRONG! You've failed yourself!"

A young man in the front row with a freckled face and fading red hair raised his hand, was recognized by the burly man:

"But sir, I don't have a father, I don't know how to do whatever it is I need to do!"

"And you want us to help you get out of the mess you created?"

"I - I don't have any money to pay for an attorney, I - "

"Shut up! Stop whining! Santa Claus is dead, don't you understand, DEAD!"

"But I don't have a father to help me!"

The burly man looked around the room:

"How many of you don't have fathers or don't know who you father is?"

All of the hands went up.