Where you scared of Santa when you were a kid? I was, or at least I was felt intimidated. To see him on the trees, Christmas cards and Christmas commercials was fine but when you had to meet him in person that was a different song.

I remember my mother would take me every year to handle the letter to the Three Kings (the Spanish version of Santa) to a commercial center in Madrid. There used to be long queues to see the Three Kings to get your picture. I suppose this tradition of having the Three Kings at the malls to get thousands of Spanish kids sitting on their knees was a commercial technique imported from the US. So there you have a big percentage of kids who are really scared of this old fat man. Sadly, some parents don’t realize how traumatic the experience can be to the mind of little kids, and they usually laugh about it.

The Three Kings are be pretty intimidating too. Specially Baltasar because the fact is that three decades ago in Spain the people was not used to see black people around, there were not very many immigrants from Africa yet. Don’t forget we were still living under a dictatorship. So for a little kid the experience of seeing a King, who comes from the far East, and he is a magician, and then is black, it was pretty impressive!

I always remember an anecdote about the first time my sister saw a black man in the street. She asked my mother what that man with dark skin was, and my mother didn’t think of anything more stupid that telling her he was a “chocolate man”, so for several years my sister kept believing that black people where made of chocolate! This is how poor culture used to be in Spain in my childhood days.

Curiously, the King Baltasar was always one of the favorite kings for the kids. Not because he he was made of chocolate, but probably because he always looked more fun than the other two, who would always look so serious. if you look at this picture where I’m standing with Baltasar you can see how funny he looks. The guy in the other picture is supposed to be a Royal Page. It’s really curious because every time I look at this picture I can remember the feeling of his hand in the glove touching my hand, just like if it was today.

My mother always said that we would go see the Royal Pages because the Kings were too busy. a lot of parents keep using this excuse to explain the proliferation of Kings and Santas in different shapes and styles during Christmas. What a mess for the poor kids!

Anyway, I think the Magic Kings always looked a little scary just because we never really saw the real ones, they never really showed the characteristic look of a wise and magic man. And I wonder where these honorable actors would come from, I wonder if the mall would do some sort of casting of Magic Kings. And I also wonder if they would pass some sort of psychological test to see if they were really ready to handle it. I wonder if they would do some kind of fast curse to learn how to calm down the kids who would cry as soon as they would seat on their knees.

I think playing a Magic King or Santa is something to be. Really beautiful! Many years ago I had a curious experience when a friend of mine and I were visiting a relative of mine who was working at an old people’s home. It was the night that the Three Kings come in Christmas, and we were rushed to get in the rooms with a hand full of candy pretending to be the kings. We were not even disguised, we were young and we had long hair. My relative introduced us as the Magic Kings, so we had to improvise and do our best. At first, we thought we were victims of a practical joke, but then we realized of how happy these old people were about seeing us. And I can swear that in the smiles and the spark in the eyes of these old people I could feel the same illusion that I did many years ago, when I was a little kid in the presence of the Three Magic Kings.