23.

brother are very close, aren't you, Nikki?"

"Yes."

"As close as my brother and I?" I breathed through my lipstick.

"Yes, Mr. Stevens."

"Then, you are.. !

I

"Yes," said this vision of feminine loveliness, "Yes, I am Santa Claus!" I must have had a funny look on my face because Santa continued--"You seem surprised, Mr. Stevens...ah...Barbara, mean. And yet could anything be more logical. In our world we attribute the qualities of loving, giving, generosity, nurturing of children, and unselfishness to women, though I admit that not all women have such feminine attributes". Mrs. Claus interrupted, "The one person in the world who best expresses these qualities is my beloved Santa.. Once a year he appears to the world as the be- loved Saint Nicholas and shows his love of children by his trips down the ohimneys of the world. The other 364 days, he expresses his true nature as a beautiful woman, My Nikki."

My head was reeling and I noticed that John was also staring open mouthed. Fortunately, the tape recorder in my oversized purse was running, so we got a verbatim report on what Santa had said on the subject.

"I have been making my yearly trip with the reindeer for long, long time", the tape recorded, "and I have seen a lot of changes in the world. I'm afraid that most people forget, in the glare of department store windows and blatant commercialism, that I make that trip in celebration of a birthday. To me, the Man whose birthday I celebrate was the most perfect example of all that is good, and fine and decent. I am but a poor imitator. I wouldn't say that He was a transvestite, in spite of his long robes, but rather that he was a normal masculine man who expressed those qual- ities that society today calls feminine. He was loving, tender, sentimental. He adored women as he proved many times. He raised the status of women by his defense of the Adultress. He gave sym- pathy, tender care, healing ministrations to the sick. He wanted to eliminate hate, war, avarice, agressiveness. He begged us to appreciate beauty, to love our neighbor. In brief, he was the ul- timate of femininity in a masculine guise. In a much lesser way,