When You Wish Upon A Fluff

November 29, 2010 5:58 AM

Childhood tradition that I thought Everyone Did, but now it seems to be just me: "Catching Santa Claus"

Location: Southern California
Time: Mid-to-late 70s

Sometimes you see these white puffs floating through the air, right? I don't know if they are milkweed or dogwood or what. Images of each don't match what I remember (and still see from time to time). I guess it doesn't matter, although I wanted to illustrate it.

Anyway, the idea was that if you caught the fluff and held it in your hands, you could tell it a wish and it would deliver that wish to Santa at the North Pole. (This wasn't a Christmas-only thing; I guess we just imagined Santa up there waiting for mid-year wishes to fulfill.) Obviously if another child caught the "santa claus" then your wish wouldn't be delivered, so there were some strategems on releasing safely and wars fought over who could and could not intercept a wish.

I mentioned this to my wife last night and she was like "what". I called in my kids to testify but their word was suspect as it turned out I was the one that taught it to them. She asked Twitter and nobody had heard of this. Rudimentary googling finds nothing either.

Does anyone else remember this or do anything similar? Possibly related to, but distinct from, wishing on a dandelion. The really difficult part of the thing I'm talking about was catching the fluff in the first place, because of wind, hand-induced air currents, fences, etc, none of which is a challenge for dandelions.

posted by DU to Society & Culture (36 answers total)

Cottonwood or milkweed I think. I don't remember a specific Santa Claus angle, but yeah, catch the milkweed and send a wish.

Southern Ohio, mid-late '70s.

Cottonwood is bitter early spring I think and milkweed is balmy fall, if your weather memory helps.
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:07 AM on November 29, 2010

Any sort of plant fluff (milkweed, dandelion, cottonwood), no Santa Claus involved but we would catch it and send a wish.

Chicago, late 70s.
posted by bolognius maximus at 6:10 AM on November 29, 2010

Appalachia here---we chased 'em and made a wish, and I heard people refer to them as Santa Claus...but we didn't.
posted by TomMelee at 6:11 AM on November 29, 2010

I did this. My sister told me they were fairies. Never heard the santa thing. This was the 90's, in the KY-OH-WV area.
posted by Captain Cardanthian! at 6:18 AM on November 29, 2010

Pennsylvania, late 1970s and milkweed seeds--wishies--to catch and release with a wish.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:18 AM on November 29, 2010

Where were your parents/kid-friends-parents from? It sound like it might have been imported.

I grew up in Southern California at the same time and never heard of this.
posted by vacapinta at 6:25 AM on November 29, 2010

Scotland. Mid-70s. Rosebay Willowherb (bombweed/fireweed). Catch a fairy and make a wish. First thing you did in the new school year, as the plants went to seed late August.
posted by scruss at 6:37 AM on November 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Like others, I grew up making wishes on those things (in Michigan, FWIW) but Santa Claus was not involved. Yours just sounds like a local or regional variation.
posted by not that girl at 6:40 AM on November 29, 2010

Also:

Wishies

More wishies

Milkweed fairies

And even a song for wishmaking:

In a milkweed cradle all close and warm,
(Place cupped hands together)

Little seeds are hiding safe from harm.
(Keep hands closed)

Open wide the cradle now, hold it high.
(Open cupped hands, raise them above your head)

Come along wind, help them fly.
(Sway open hands in the air)
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:43 AM on November 29, 2010

You can definitely catch a milkweed fluff and make a wish, but the Santa Claus angle is new to me.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:44 AM on November 29, 2010

I remember doing this as a child but without the Santa angle. This was mid to late 80s in central VA.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 6:47 AM on November 29, 2010

Response by poster: I'm seeing a lot of midwest-ish stuff here, MI/OH/PA. We lived in SoCal but my Dad was from WI and my mom moved around, including MI, and would have most previously been in MI with my dad at college. So maybe they got it from there and I got it from them?

I'm glad at least one other person remembers the Santa thing....
posted by DU at 6:50 AM on November 29, 2010

The wishing-on-fluff bit rings a strange bell for me - mid-to-late 1970s, Chicago suburbs and occasionally northeastern Iowa.
posted by jquinby at 6:52 AM on November 29, 2010

Northern California here, dandelion fluff. We caught them and made a wish, but not for Santa. I'm not clear where the wishes went (fairies? maybe?) but we did chase them all over and catch them for wishes. Our little caveat was we couldn't damage them in any way or the wish would be ruined.
posted by patheral at 6:54 AM on November 29, 2010

Response by poster: Oh and it looks like cottonwood was probably it, although finding an image of a single fluff is hard. I never saw a treefull.
posted by DU at 6:54 AM on November 29, 2010

Response by poster: Oh right, you had to be careful. Although part of that was because they wouldn't fly away (to deliver the wish to Santa!) if you broke them.

I wonder if I made up the Santa part myself, actually. Like, I knew you were making a wish and it was going to be delivered and the only place you ever send wishes is to Santa, so obviously...
posted by DU at 6:56 AM on November 29, 2010

Texas Panhandle: nope, never heard of it. I think I remember some fellow kid telling me that if you could blow off all the seeds of a dandelion in a single breath you'd get a wish, but that sounds more like a birthday cake variation than something related to yours. And it was just that one kid, no one else in my area seemed to have any beliefs regarding floating seeds and wishes.
posted by sotonohito at 7:01 AM on November 29, 2010

I would like to redact my previous statement as a false memory. We said they were fairies, not Santas. Behold the power of suggestion.
posted by TomMelee at 7:38 AM on November 29, 2010

About half my family moved to SoCal during/after WWII and Korean War from entrenched Appalachian families (OH-PA-WV), so we probably exported that particular bit of hillfolk weirdness. Why not Santa?

Also I have read that blowing dandelion clocks (blowing out dandelion fluffs) will tell you the hour of your death - how many puffs it takes is what time you will go out. Put me right off dandelions, I'll tell you.
posted by toodleydoodley at 8:13 AM on November 29, 2010

Wisconsin (Milwaukee), mid 70's, definitely wished on the fluff if you caught it. No Santa angle.
posted by JJtheJetPlane at 8:37 AM on November 29, 2010

Response by poster: Oooh, you know what? The SoCal area we lived in was part of a "colony" of co-religionists (non-cult, though). And I bet that saying anything was a "fairy" was verboten but Santa may have been OK (despite recent "Santa" = "Satan" stuff).
posted by DU at 8:45 AM on November 29, 2010

Late 1960s - mid 1970s. Must have started very, very early in childhood because i called them (and still do) "fuzzy white-whites!" We caught them and blew them away with a wish. No Santa involved, but a vague inkling of fairies remained.
posted by keener_sounds at 8:53 AM on November 29, 2010

Oh yes, this was in New Jersey and semi-rural Pennsylvania.
posted by keener_sounds at 8:55 AM on November 29, 2010

Never heard of it. Born in 1974, grew up in South Carolina.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 9:10 AM on November 29, 2010

Upstate NY, late 80s - mid 90s. I have never heard of catching the dandelion fluff, but picking a dandelion once it's gone to fluff and blowing while wishing was common. I seem to remember that it had similar rules to birthday candles, in that you needed to get ALL the seeds off with one puff or your wish wouldn't count.
posted by coupdefoudre at 9:26 AM on November 29, 2010

late 80s - mid 90s NJ - catch and make a wish, but no santa angle or voiding of wish if another child caught it after you.
posted by WeekendJen at 10:02 AM on November 29, 2010

I grew up in MD and my cousin in Baltimore taught me this.

Yup, catching wishes. Catch it, wish on it, let it go.
posted by frecklefaerie at 10:14 AM on November 29, 2010

Yorkshire and London, 1970s. We called them fairies, and you could make a wish if you caught one.
posted by vickyverky at 10:20 AM on November 29, 2010

We also had the blowing of the dandelions (all at once or no wish), but I liked catching them better since it required more effort.
posted by patheral at 11:03 AM on November 29, 2010

Queensland, Australia, late 60's / early 70's. Catch them (we thought of it as being from dandelions but, on reflection, it was probably from milkweed), hold them in your hands, blow and release into the air while making a wish. We definitely tried to release them so they'd soar away as high and fast as possible, but I don't remember anything about catching & hijacking other people's wishes.

We too called them "Santa Claus", or "Santa's Beard". Thanks to Christmas being in the middle of summer, about the time a 4-year-old starts thinking of Santa is when they start turning up.

(You know Christmas is really close when the Christmas Beetles arrive…)
posted by Pinback at 3:59 PM on November 29, 2010 [2 favorites]

I grew up in North Texas in the 80s. Definitely saw these cottonwood puffs floating around regularly, but I've never heard of any catching them/wishing on them traditions until now.
posted by hootenatty at 4:11 PM on November 29, 2010

Yep, fairies granted your wishes when you blew off the fluff when I lived in Michigan, but I taught my friends when I moved to Georgia because they'd never heard of such a thing.
posted by lesli212 at 10:32 PM on November 29, 2010

Also early 70's in Queensland Australia and exactly the way that Pinback describes it. My kids do it too!
posted by h00py at 12:32 AM on November 30, 2010

Growing up in rural Florida, we made wishes on the fluff from seed pods of Spanish moss. No Santa involvement.
posted by judith at 2:41 AM on November 30, 2010

Response by poster: Also early 70's in Queensland Australia and exactly the way that Pinback describes it. My kids do it too!

You also called them "Santa Claus" or "Santa's Beard"? That's very interesting. I wonder what the Australia connection to SoCal might be.
posted by DU at 5:33 AM on November 30, 2010

Yep, our family called them fairies and made wishes. Our friends called them Santas and made wishes. Strangely, no-one seemed to have a problem with the opposing ideologies. So in mid-1980s Victoria, Australia... anything went!
posted by indienial at 1:31 AM on December 4, 2010