Lebanon, PA is a coal town, you know

Welcome to the Internet world, ladies and gentlemen, where you can carefully build a music career over the course of 25 years, attend Julliard, get a Masters from Westminster Choir College, and make a name for yourself in the world of diaper studies, and only finally obtain nationwide fame, or rather infamy, when you tell a class full of First Graders that Santa Claus died 1662 years ago in Turkey.

“I did not tell the students Santa Claus was dead,” she explained. “I said there was a man named Nickolas of Myrna who died in 343 A.D., upon whom the Santa Claus myth (is based).”

On Monday night, Jamey started to recite Moore’s famous poem while sitting on a couch next to a freshly cut tree, trimmed in tinsel and topped with a golden star: “’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house. No creatures stirred.”

She paused, looked up, and said that’s when the teacher interjected, just a few lines before the verse that announces the arrival of “a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.”

“The teacher stopped reading and told us no one comes down the chimney,” Jamey said, curling into a ball on the couch, bracing her chin on her knees, her voice shrinking away like melting ice cream. “She said our parents buy the presents, not Santa.”

Any bets as to how much coal is piled in her front yard come Sunday? Santa could pick some up locally.