Finding a place for Jesus and Santa Claus at Christmastime is challenging.
The secular holiday ignores Jesus. The Christian celebration forgets about Santa.
Not in my boyhood home. My Irish-Catholic mother found room at the inn for both.
She told me Santa brought gifts on Dec. 25 to celebrate Jesus’ birthday. She even had a small statue of Santa praying at the Nativity.
(Michael O'Brien) Santa prays at the Nativity, displayed each Christmas by Michael O’Brien’s mother, Kathleen.
I admired her skill at festive integration. My wife, Vicki, and I tried it with our own kids, too.
And St. Vincent de Paul Parish School in Holladay even let me try it with the annual student holiday program. Music director Scott Larrabee and I wrote a new Christmas carol the students still sing a decade later.
The lyrics reflect my attempt at a unifying holiday theme:
Jesus is…
the reason for the season,
the light that makes my red nose glow
the joy behind my ho ho ho,
the magic that makes snowmen dance,
the music in each reindeer prance…
This approach is hardly without precedent.
Today’s Santa first took shape 200 years ago with a beloved and now-famous poem written by Clement Moore about St. Nicholas. Moore’s poetic hero was a compassionate third-century Christian bishop who gave gifts to poor children in the name of Jesus.
Although I love how my own family has integrated the two dominant figures of Christmas, I keep my ears open to hear how other people of faith navigate this challenge.
That’s how I learned about Vernal resident Gale Batty.
A plot to ‘trap’ Santa
Gale lived his whole life amid the farms and dinosaur fossils of the lovely Ashley Valley in the Uinta Basin. As a child, Gale quickly solved math problems and easily built things.
He used those skills on the farm his grandfather started and later while working at a nearby power plant. Gale’s true passions, however, were the outdoors, his wife, Tammy, their five children and their 16 grandchildren.
(Batty and Morton families) Gale and Tammy Batty and their grandkids.
His identical twin sons-in-law, Clint Morton and Carl Morton, saw those passions up close. They married Gale’s identical twin daughters, Jessica and Jennifer, 20 years ago.
(Batty and Morton families) Two sets of twin couples, Jennifer and Carl Morton, left, and Carl and Jessica Morton.
The Mortons told me that in addition to camping and hunting with his family, Gale loved to teach at his local chapel of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And, like my mother, Gale loved Christmas and Santa.
During a deer hunting trip with two granddaughters, Gale’s skills and passions merged together in an unforgettable way for the Batty and Morton families.
Someone joked they should send a photo of their hunting trophy to Santa, warning him Rudolph might be next if they did not get what they wanted for Christmas.
The moment of levity inspired Gale.
The next Christmas, to the delight of his grandkids, Gale planned and set the first of what would be several traps trying to catch Santa during his annual nocturnal visits to the Batty home.
That first time, Gale set out delicious cookies, hoping to lure Santa into a doorway snare. Gale told his grandkids he’d hold the jolly old elf hostage until Santa agreed to give them what they wanted for Christmas.
When the grandkids arrived on Christmas morning to see if Gale’s plan had worked, all they found in the snare was Santa’s hat and a note wishing Gale better luck next year.
The game was on.
(Batty and Morton families) A Christmas morning photo shows Gale Batty caught in his own Santa trap.
Over the next dozen years, Gale tried to catch Santa with bear traps, snares, covered holes, and various other homemade contraptions made from nets and ropes.
The scheming typically started weeks in advance. Gale would write down ideas and sketch trap designs.
As the Mortons recall, “The traps themselves were fun, but the aftermath of the traps and Grandpa’s explanations and detailed storytelling were where the real fun was.”
One Christmas morning, Gale told an elaborate tale explaining the big hoofprint the grandkids noticed on Gale’s forehead.
(Batty and Morton families) On Christmas morning, Gale Batty explains to his grandchildren what happened with one of his Santa traps.
On Christmas Eve, he’d caught a reindeer with a rooftop snare and then tied it in a shed to show his family. As he finished, the reindeer kicked Gale in the head and knocked him out.
After hearing the story, the grandkids rushed outside only to find reindeer tracks leading away from the shed. Inside, they discovered that Gale’s very own mischievous Elf on the Shelf had released the captured reindeer while Gale was unconscious.
Another year, Gale sprinkled sleeping powder on Santa’s cookies but forgot about his sinister plot, ate one, and dozed off himself.
One snare nabbed only Santa’s black boot. Santa saved himself from another trap by setting it off with a giant candy cane.
“And another year,” according to the Mortons, “the children showed up to find Grandpa all tied up in rope again as his plans were foiled.”
Quiet expression of religion
Gale never infused his trap-making or post-trap storytelling with any specific religious connotations.
The Mortons, however, think the traps expressed some of Gale’s most profound religious beliefs: “spending time with family, love (shown by Grandpa to his grandkids), forgiveness (usually Santa to Grandpa), and never giving up.”
Santa never put Gale on the naughty list for any of these traps but they did develop a friendly rivalry. Santa’s annual notes indicated he understood Gale’s generous underlying motive — helping his grandkids have the best and most memorable Christmas possible.
(Batty and Morton families) A note from Santa to one of Gale Batty’s grandkids explains how Santa escaped from one of Gale’s traps.
The Battys and the Mortons (and Santa, too) were devastated in May 2023, when Gale died far too young at age 66. As Christmas 2023 approached, the annual holiday magic seemed to have disappeared with him.
His young granddaughter Veronica said, “I don’t think I want to try to catch Santa this year.” When Gale’s youngest son, Luke, reported that he’d found plans for the next trap on Gale’s desk, the little granddaughter smiled.
Now it looks like Gale’s annual Santa traps will live on long after him.
Hoping to cheer up their mourning family, last year Clint and Carl Morton immortalized Gale’s Christmas tradition with “Grandpa’s Santa Trap,” a children’s book they self-published and gave to family members and friends.
(Michael O'Brien) The cover from the book Carl and Clint Morton published about their father-in-law, Gale Batty.
Jessica and Jennifer told me that the book helped soothe some of the grief from the loss of their father. “It’s nice to know that others are thinking of your loved one, too!”
Carl wrote the words in rhyme, in homage to his own favorite holiday book, Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
Clint illustrated it with charming minimalist images that Gale’s grandkids might have drawn, and that reflect the simple and whimsical nature of Gale’s traps.
The two worked together on the project for weeks, laughing as each new typed page inspired another illustration. One hilarious drawing shows Gale as a young boy, but with the same grown-up beard he had for most of the time Clint and Carl knew him.
(Batty and Morton families) The Carl Morton, left, and twin brother Clint consult with Santa on their book about Gale Batty’s traps.
To minimize any other spoilers, I’ll only say here that as with Gale, things don’t go as planned for the book’s Santa-trapping grandfather. In the end, though, Santa sees into the heart of his nemesis, and everyone loves what is found under the tree on Christmas morning.
When Jesus first arrived in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago, his message of “love your neighbor as yourself” was born, too. Santa Claus fully incarnates that message of giving to others.
Like my mother before me, I believe both are worthy of celebration. And I’m not the only one.
Try as he might, Gale Batty never managed to trap Santa. Yet, he and Clint/Carl Morton’s lovely little book just may have nabbed something even better.
They captured the wonderful and wondrous spirit of Christmas.
(Courtesy photo) Attorney and Tribune guest columnist Michael Patrick O'Brien.
Michael Patrick O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City who often represents The Salt Lake Tribune in legal matters. His book “Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks,” about growing up with the monks at an old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, was published by Paraclete Press and chosen by the League of Utah Writers as the best nonfiction book in 2022.
