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I NEVER BELIEVED IN Santa Claus.
   None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn't afford expensive presents, and they didn't want us to think we weren't as good as other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus. So they told us all about how other kids were deceived by their parents, how the toys the grown-ups claimed were made by little elves wearing bell caps in their workshop at the North Pole actually had lables on them saying MADE IN JAPAN.
   'Try not to look down on those other children." Mom said. "It's not their fault that they've 
been brainwashed into believing silly myths."
   We celebrated Christmas, but usually about a week after December 25, when you could find perfectly good bows and wrapping paper that people had thrown away and Christmas trees discarded on the roadside that still had most of their needles and even some silver tinsel hanging on them. Mom and Dad would give us a bag of marbles or a doll or a slingshot that had been marked way down in an after-Christmas sale.
   ...
   "Pick out your favorite star," Dad said that night. He told me I could have it for keeps. He said it was my Christmas present.
   "You can't give me a star!" I said. "No one owns the stars."
   "That's right," Dad said. "No one else onws them. You just have to claim it before anyone else does, like that dago fellow Columbus claime America for Queen Isabella. Claiming a star as your own has every bit as much logic to it."
   I thought about it and realized Dad was right. He was always figuring out things like that.
   I could have any star I wanted, Dad said, except Betelgeuseand Rigel, because Lori and Brian had already laid claim to them.
   I looked up to the stars and tried to figure out which was the best one. You could see hundreds, maybe thousands or even millions, twinkling in the clear desert sky. The longer you looked and the more your eyes adjusted to the dark, the more stars you'd see, layer of them gradually becoming visible. There was one in particular, in the west above the mountains but low in the sky, that shone brightly than all the rest.
   "I want that one." I said.
   Dad grinned. "That's Venus." he said....
   We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myths and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. "Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten," Dad said, " you will still have your stars."