I Spent $85 to Eat Breakfast With Santa

For all of my life, I thought eating breakfast with Santa was totally normal. Every year, he would come to my church in western New York and sit in the corner of the reception hall for a few hours. (Sometimes, he was played by my dad or my cousin Frank.) The kids would eat pancakes and drink hot chocolate in his presence and work up their courage. Whenever they felt ready, they could meet the big guy and discuss whatever they needed to. And then they would get a candy cane.

Random adult members of the congregation sometimes joined too, usually because they knew the man under the beard and had no complaint with a hot breakfast. It was all very casual. So I didn’t think it would be a big deal when I mentioned to my mother this year that my favorite minor-league baseball team, the Brooklyn Cyclones, was planning to hold a breakfast-with-Santa event at their stadium in Coney Island and that I intended to go. She is a woman who has,