OPINION: I proved Santa Claus is real generations ago

Growing up, I had a rascally older brother who would always try to lead me astray. He’d tell me things like the Cubs stunk and the White Sox were No. 1, when I knew that was utter disinformation.

He’d do things like write “Jeff is a butthole” in a tiny notebook and hide it somewhere in the house, knowing I’d search high and low to find that notebook to make sure no one else found it, read that passage, and got the wrong impression about me.

So when he told me Santa Claus wasn’t real, I knew that was Christmas heresy – although I didn’t yet know what that word meant.

I went to my mom for a clear answer. My mom was a devout Christian who could not tell a lie. In my teen years, when the phone rang, I’d sometimes tell her to tell so-and-so I wasn’t home. Instead of playing along, she’d have me go stand on the porch so she could truthfully say “Jeff isn’t in the house right now.”

Regarding Santa, my mom gave me some “Yes, Virginia” mumbo jumbo about how if I believed in Santa, he must be real. It wasn’t the validation or clarity I was seeking, although I didn’t yet know the meaning of those words either.

So I devised a test.

The night before Christmas Eve – we opened our Christmas presents the morning of Dec. 24 — I went to sleep on the floor of my brother’s and my room, knowing the hard floor would wake me up at some point.

When it did in the middle of the night, I tip-toed into the kitchen, poured a large glass of milk, and placed it on the kitchen table along with the finest looking chocolate chip cookie we had in the house. I then wrote “For Santa” on a large piece of paper and excessively Scotch-taped it to the kitchen table in case a winter blast accompanied Santa’s visit.

Then I took a pee, washed my hands, prayed for President Ford not to fall and hurt himself, and went back to sleep — in the bed this time.

When I woke up on Christmas Eve, I raced into the kitchen. And there was my proof. The glass of milk was half empty, the cookie had sustained a large single bite, and the excessively taped note was gone.

And I rejoiced.

I reasoned through deduction it could have been no one else but Santa: My dad worked the graveyard shift at the state prison and wasn’t home yet, my rascally brother was in the bedroom with me the whole night, my oldest brother had gotten married and moved out, my teenage brother slept until noon when there wasn’t school, and my mom would never eat a cookie for breakfast. Besides, the large bite mark of the half-devoured cookie didn’t match my mom’s.

Columbo would have been proud of me.

Then I ran into the living room and there was my present from Santa under the Christmas tree. Yes, it had the same wrapping paper as the presents from my mom and dad, but that was entirely circumstantial. It could have been a popular pattern that year.

To tie up a few loose ends, I asked my mom how Santa had gotten into the house when we didn’t have a chimney. She suggested maybe he had a master key to everyone’s home. I asked why there were no tracks in the snow. She noted Santa flew in a sleigh and maybe the overnight snow had covered up any reindeer tracks. It was all entirely plausible — I knew what that word meant.

Armed with prima facie evidence, I excessively packaged that half-devoured cookie in Saran wrap and took it to school after the Christmas break to show the Santa-deniers who had been deceived by misinformation, public school indoctrination and the deep state.

The Philistines in the upper elementary grades remained non-believers, but I shored up my third grade base that day.

As for my rascally older brother, he hasn’t gotten a Christmas present from Santa Claus in 50 years.

As for me, there will be a cookie and milk on the table again this year and I’ll soon find out of this year’s Journal editorials have been naughty or nice.

As for the kids reading this, my successful experiment is easily replicable — which means you can perform the same test in your kitchen this month and become a truth-teller among a Santa-denying society. And by the way, the White Sox still stink.