A belief in Santa somehow suited this Jewish child

Despite being a child of the Depression era who lived in a Jewish neighborhood, I nevertheless looked under my bed every Christmas morning to see what gifts Santa Claus had brought me. I never found anything, of course, but how did this symbol of the Christian world become embedded in my preteen Jewish psyche? This was long before newspaper advertisements and TV commercials flooded our minds with all manner of pre-Christmas department-store sales. "Save 40, 50, 60 percent! Save! Save! Save!" It's amazing how much you can save by spending.

This idea about gifts beneath my bed on Christmas morning couldn't have come from those close to me. We were 14 people living in a three-story rowhouse. With such crowded conditions, there was quite a bit of shoulder rubbing. Yiddish and English sparred with each other for attention, with Yiddish frequently winning out, but neither one promoted Christmas. It's not that we had anything against Christmas; it simply wasn't our holiday.

There were few luxuries in our lives. One treat we did possess was a table radio that seemed to be on 24 hours a day. Between 4:30 and 6 p.m., that precious radio belonged to me. With my ear close to the speaker and my imagination drawing pictures as the action moved along, I listened raptly as the heroine pleaded to be rescued from a terrible fate or as the struggling ranchers fought the cruel railroad barons. It was the Green Hornet and his faithful servant, Kato. There was Chandu the magician, and the Shadow, who taught me that "evil lurks in the hearts of men." And the Lone Ranger astride the great horse Silver, with his faithful companion, Tonto, by his side.

These 15-minute dramas introduced me to the good, the bad and the ugly of this world - with the good always coming out on top. It was hero vs. villain, with no mitigating circumstances for the villain. There was never any doubt about the outcome.

I certainly didn't learn about Christmas from these morality tales or from my family, to whom anything not Jewish was as foreign as the man in the moon. It was a world of bagels, lox, chicken soup, stuffed cabbage, synagogues, Yiddish newspapers, deep accents, and hardworking people determined to adapt.

My parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents arrived in the United States on Nov. 11, 1912. Most lived out their lives not more than a dozen miles from where they disembarked at what is now Penn's Landing. Bringing all of their customs and beliefs intact with them, they had no doubt about whom or what they were. They celebrated all of the Jewish holidays, read the Haggadah (narrative of Israel's flight from Egypt) at Passover, attended synagogue reasonably often, and fasted faithfully on Yom Kippur. It is a rich heritage that has been passed on. But not a word about looking under the bed on Christmas morning.

The mystery remains. Did it come from my friends, who, with two exceptions, were all Jewish?

I remember lanky Johnny Bonassi. Looking back, I wonder whether he felt like an outsider. I don't think so. He blended right in except for his height - 6 feet, a veritable giant among us Eastern Europeans, who rarely got beyond 5-foot-6.

The second was Joe Columbo, whose family lived in the center of our predominantly Jewish community. Although not too athletic, he played half-ball, tire-ball, and other street games with the same enthusiasm his family showed in attending church every Sunday. His grandfather made his own wine once a year. He would choose a few of us to be official "stompers." We'd roll up our trousers and scrub our feet thoroughly. He would observe with a critical eye as we stomped happily on the grapes in his circular tub. He didn't care which denomination the feet belonged to - Catholic, Protestant or Jew - as long as they did their job. We had a ball, but our feet were dyed beautiful blues and purples for months afterward, depending on how often we washed.

Try as I might, I could never connect grape-stomping with gifts under my bed. I ran out of possibilities. Maybe it was the desire of a youngster to milk the holidays for all they were worth. Was it the lack of presents received at Hanukkah? No. As poor as everyone was, the kids never went through the eight days of the holiday without receiving at least one gift.

Eventually, I gave it up. After years of leaning over the edge and finding nothing but worn sneakers and soiled socks, I reluctantly concluded that Santa would never come to my house. I guess I was growing up. It was time to "put away those childish things" and, like little Jackie, who said goodbye to his playmate, Puff the magic dragon, I bade farewell to Santa and wished him well on his travels. He just wasn't for me.