Santa Claus stories from the past


“We knew Santa had come when we could smell the apples and oranges,” all the retirees agreed at a holiday gathering. Then, as now, children believed in Santa – for a while.

“I believed in Santa for a long time. Then I got a hint he might not be real, so I looked around for presents. I found them hidden way back under the bed. I found a large doll. I knew it would be mine. When my friend came over I asked her, ‘do you want to see my doll?’ Of course she did. We crawled under the bed, pulled out the doll and looked at it before returning it to its hiding place.”

It was a great secret to share with a best friend until the friend told Beth’s mother, “Beth showed me her doll.”

“My mother was so angry, she gave her a spanking for getting into the presents. I never did like that girl so very much after she told on me to my mother,” Beth said.

Peggy said, “My mother and sisters and I would drive down to my grandparents in Louisiana for Christmas. My mother would pack the presents in the trunk of the car and then pack in our suitcases so the gifts were out of sight. One year I was still trying to act as if I believed in Santa. Well, in the middle of the woods we got a flat tire. My mom said ‘Peggy you take your sisters up the road to the woods for a while.’”

Peggy did not exactly understand, but she took her sisters for a walk in the woods.

“I had to take them way ahead to the woods so that my mother could unload the presents and get the tire. No one came to help my mother. Evidently she managed to unpack the trunk, haul out the tire and change it, then repack everything before we went on our way.” Her little sisters never knew everything done to sustain the myth of Santa for another year.

At least one families had a very different tradition, according to Joe who told about his friend’s family. “That family lived in a house with a dog trot (an open hallway between the two sets of rooms). Every year when they heard Santa, they would go to the end of the dog trot and try to shoot him down.”

“There would be a noise on the roof and the sound of a gunshot. Every year all that fell was Santa’s bag of presents for the children in the house. The gifts would fall at the end of the dog trot. The parents kept up the image and made sure the kids would see a trail of footprints running away from the house and over the border fence with packages spilled along the way.”

One year Joe’s friend told him, “I am going to stay awake and wait for Santa.”

The friend’s dad said he would wait up with him. Before bed, the dad set up a fish line from the bed to the dogtrot where he tied to pots and pan to let them know when Santa arrived.

The friend told Joe that after dark he heard the noise. Son and father ran to the end of the dogtrot to shoot down Santa. Joe shook his head, “They just weren’t right in that home.”

Right or not, they enjoyed the toys dropped at the end of the dogtrot.

Whether you welcome Santa or not, have oranges and apples or not, may your Christmas be merry.


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