COVID-19 AND THE CHANUKAH MAN

Life in 2020 had been terrible for Ben Steinberg in so many ways he couldn’t count them all. He had lost his Mom, and his wife had succumbed to a serious illness. He hated saying the word that began with the letter ‘’C ‘’ because it made him angry. Why with all the modern medicine and technology available in the world was there no cure? Now on top of everything else, there was Covid.

The only thing that kept Ben going was his seven-year-old daughter Sarah. She was his world. She looked like her Mother, LC and she was wise beyond her years. Sarah attended Sunset Heights Public School and Ben did everything in his power to allow her to have some sort of normalcy.

Sunset Heights had provided a portal for online learning, and while it wasn’t great for socializing, it did allow for education to continue and to create a sense of consistency. Sarah loved her classes and it wasn’t long before she knew how to Zoom with her friends. Ben thought that Sarah’s generation was going to be very proficient when it came to technology.

Ben’s best friend was his cousin Annie. She was a terrific person and when LC had passed, Annie and her husband Jerry had been more supportive than he could have ever imagined. The other important person in Ben’s life was Tita who had been Sarah’s Nanny since the day she was born. Tita was a lovely woman who was a big part of the family. She made most of the meals and was dedicated to Sarah.

One afternoon after finishing school and talking with her friend Chrissy, Sarah walked over to Ben who was working at his desk, and tapped him on the knee. ‘’Daddy, my friend Chrissy said that Santa Claus is going to come down her chimney and give her presents. She said he comes to her house every year, why Daddy doesn’t Santa come here?’’

It was the first time Ben had to think about Santa Claus and Christmas and Chanukah. He and LC had taken Sarah to the mall every year to sit on Santa’s knee but they had never thought much about it as she was young and was only really interested in presents. ‘’Um, Honey, we don’t have Santa visit because he is busy visiting all the different boys and girls and he has a lot of work to do, so instead, we get a visit from The Chanukah Man. ‘’