It was the third week of Aries, m.y. 53. Christmas was only a couple of weeks away, and already the taprooms were brewing more beer for the festivities to come. We had just returned from delivering medical supplies to the poor schmucks at Viking, and were watching the bartender as he strung some discarded fiberoptics over the bar.
"I miss mistletoe," I murmured. I was working on my second beer by then, so I wasn't conscious of my alliteration. "Mistletoe and Christmas trees."
"You don't know mistletoe and Christmas trees," Doc said.
"Sure do. Had them in my family's apartment. My mother and father, they used to kiss beneath the..."
"You grew up on the Moon. You had vinyl mistletoe and plastic Christmas trees. Bet you've never smelled the real thing."
"No, but it was close enough."
"Not in the slightest. You'd know the difference." Doc sipped his beer. "But I get the point. Out in the belt, we'd get together in the wardroom on Christmas Eve and sing carols. You know caroling...?"
"Sure. 'Silent Night,' 'The First Day of Christmas,' 'Jingle Bell Rock'..."
"'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,' that's my favorite. And then we'd exchange gifts. Sarah gave me a ring with a little piece of gold from an asteroid ore our ship had refined." He smiled at the memory. "Marriage didn't last, but I held onto the ring."
"My favorite was a little rocket from my Dad. I was eight ... nine, I guess. He made it for me in his lab. About two meters long, with a hollow nose cone. We put a little note with our squid number in the cone, then went EVA and hiked up to the crater rim, set the trajectory, fueled it up and fired it at Earth." Once again, I remembered that little rocket's silent launch, and how it lanced straight up into the black sky over Tycho. "Dad told me that it would eventually get there and land somewhere, and maybe someone would find it and send back a letter."
"Anyone ever fax you?"
"Naw. It probably never got to Earth ... or if it did, it probably burned up on entry." I shrugged. "But I like to think that it made the trip, and just landed some place where no one ever found it."
"But it meant something, didn't it? Like Sarah's ring. No Christmas gift is ever insignificant. There's always a little of your soul in whatever you give someone." Doc scowled at the lights being strung above the bar. "Here, it's just an excuse for people to get drunk and stupid, and the next day everyone has to apologize to each other. Sorry for banging on your door. Sorry for keeping you awake last night. Sorry for making a pass at your wife..."
"What do you expect? Rudolph the green-nosed reindeer?"
"Red. Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Don't they teach you selenians anything?"
"Oh, yeah. Red-nosed reindeer." I polished off my second and last, shoved the mug across the bar. "Yeah, I know, but all that Santa stuff doesn't make a lot of sense out here, y'know?"
"It doesn't? Why shouldn't it?"
I could tell that he was spoiling for a fight. "Aw, c'mon, Doc ... does this look like Earth to you? Cheststuff smoking on an open fire, jackass stepping on your toes..."
"You can't even get the lyrics right! 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your toes...'"
"What's a chestnut?"
"Never mind." He turned away from me. "Jeff, I'll have another one. Put it on his tab."
I didn't object. Doc was in a self-righteous mood; when he was this way, silence was the only way you could deal with him. I helped myself to some fried algae from the bowl the bartender had placed between us while I waited for him to calm down.
"I guess what I miss the most," he finally said, "is the look ... no, not just the look, the glow ... children have on Christmas morning. Until I came here, I'd never seen a kid who didn't think it was the best day of the year. Even out in the belt, it was something they could look forward to. But here..."
"I know what you mean." My gaze wandered to the line of ceramic liquor bottles lined up on the shelf. "The best some of them can hope for is that their folks won't be too hung over to make breakfast for them. I mean, some people try to do better, but ... I dunno, something's missing."
"I'll tell you what's missing" Doc tapped his finger against the bartop. "It isn't just trees or presents. Magic, that's missing. There's no Sinterklass."
"Yeah. No Santa Claus."
"Did I say Santa Claus? I didn't say Santa Claus. I said Sinterklass."
"There's a difference?"
For a moment, I thought he was going to brain me with his beer mug. "Hell, yes, there's a difference! Sinterklass arrives in Holland on a ship from Spain. He's a tall, slender gent with a long white beard who wears a red robe and bishop's minter. He rides into town on a white horse with his assistant Zwarte Piet, where he gives presents to all the good children on his list. Then he ... what's so damn funny?"
"That's Santa Claus, you quack! Only the details are different! Reindeer, elves, a sleigh from the North Pole ... it's still the same mook, right down to the extortion racket."
"True, but Sinterklass came first ... or St. Nicholas, if we want to call him by his proper name." He swigged his beer. "He was brought to America by the Dutch, but just like everything else brought over from Europe, he was changed until virtually no one remembered his origins."
"Tell me about it. Same thing happened to my African ancestors ... although not by choice."
"Then you'd appreciate the similarity between Santa's elves and Zwarte Piet. It means Black Peter ... he's a Moor."
I shrugged. "Sounds like a demotion. My great-grandfather used to play Santa every Christmas at a shopping mall. There weren't many of them black Santas back then, I'm told."
"Your grandfather played Santa Claus?" He raised an eyebrow. "Now there's a coincidence. My father played Sinterklass in our village, as did my grandfather."
"No kidding?"
"Goes with the genes." He stroked his trim white beard. "Men in my family have the right whiskers for the job. All we have to do is let our beard grow out and..."
He stopped just then. To this day, I'll never forget his slack-jawed expression as he stared at me in wonderment. He had just spoken of the glow that children have on Christmas morning; in that instant, I saw something like that appear in his own face. Wonder and joy, wonder and joy; tidings of wonder and joy ... I don't believe in telepathy any more than I do in Santa Claus, yet I suddenly knew exactly what he was thinking.
"Oh, no, you don't," I said, turning to hop off the stool and book out of there. "Don't even think for a minute..."
"Oh, shut up and sit down." Doc grabbed my wrist before I could make it to the door. "Let's see if we can work this out."
Against my better judgement, I stayed. Doc finished his beer, and then we switched to coffee, and by the end of the evening I had a new name.
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