A Christmas Mitzvah

Every year my Mom does a big bash for Christmas Eve. Too much food, too much fun, just ... too much. And, every single year since there was a "family" in our family, we've had a visit from a real live Santa Claus. He brings a few presents and some holiday cheer to the whole assembly, and then departs before anyone notices that he smells like Grandpa, or that he’s wearing Uncle Ernie’s shoes.

In our house, Santa is decidedly non-sectarian. He brings gifts for Christian and Jew alike (because we usually have plenty of both), and everyone gets to sit on his lap. The problem in recent years, however, is that the kids are getting smarter and more inquisitive, and it's getting harder to find a Santa capable of fooling our little detectives, even for a few moments.

But this year's gonna be different. My sister and her husband are hosting an old friend of his for a couple of weeks, an Israeli Special Forces Something-or-Other who's in town for the holidays. His name is Ori (or something equally sexy and exotic), and he’s agreed to wear the Big Red Suit.

I think I’ve mentioned my little Catholic-girls-gone-wild fetish for the sons of Israel. Every one I ever dated treated me like a goddess, and my mother will never, ever forgive me for The One That Got Away back in 1994. So I’m positively quivering at the prospect of Ori, resplendent in the velvet suit and white wig, beckoning for me to sit in his lap and tell him what I really want for Christmas.

There’s just one problem: Mike and I are supposed to spend this Christmas Eve with his parents, as we do every second year. But I think that my flu shot must have been defective or something. I feel a little fever coming on …