Santa Clause by Robert F. Young (F&SF, January 1959)1 starts with Ross requesting his own personal Santa Claus from the devil (who he has just summoned). The devil agrees, but says he can’t subdivide “childhood fantasy”.
Ross subsequently gets the Xmas presents he wants, including a pretty blonde wife called Candy, but things starts going awry almost at once: she refuses to have anything to do with him after she has kissed him goodnight and shuts him out of her bedroom; then Jack Frost appears to ice the windows; the Sandman throws sand in his eyes before he sleeps; and a Guardian Angel—a guitar playing cowboy with wings—appears. Later on, Candy becomes pregnant (even though Ross still hasn’t been near her).
Eventually, after a few more months of these childhood fantasies (and the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc.), the Stork comes tapping at the window. Ross decides he has had enough, and once more summons the Devil: Ross tells him he wants out of the deal. The Devil agrees to modify their contract so that he won’t live in a world of childhood fantasy—but again specifies it will be for life, and apply retrospectively.
The final twist of the story (spoiler) has Ross loathing Candy, when he thinks of her, “almost as much as his mother”.
I guess the wife-mother psychosexual tangle made sense to 1950s Freudians, but it seems quite quaint today.
** (Average). 3,600 words.
1. I initially wondered if this story had first appeared in Playboy and, when I learned not, whether it was written with that magazine in mind.