I asked my father what his earliest memory of Santa was.
I remember I was about four years old — I was in preschool. My father worked in the tool and die department of American Optical Company with about 100 guys, and they did lots of stuff for the families. They had a children’s Christmas party at the Hamilton Rod and Gun club in Sturbridge, Massachusetts at the north end of Cedar Lake. The club was a lodge-type building with an upstairs and a downstairs. The upstairs was a dining area with two or three rows of tables about 30 or 40 feet long and then a front porch, and the basement was like a game room with a knotty pine wood bar. I remember being there for a Christmas party, and we drove up there, just my father and I, and when we got to the place, it was dark. We went inside and all of the kids were downstairs in the basement and we watched movies. They were Christmas movies, and they showed Santa Claus flying through the sky with Rudolph and landing on rooftops. We watched movies for a good long time, and we had candy canes and stuff.
Then it was time to have dinner for the fathers and the children, so we marched upstairs toward the dining area, but first they brought us out on the porch, and there was the biggest Christmas tree I have ever seen in my life — it was huge. I was spellbound by the size of this thing. Then it started to snow, and it was those big, big, big snowflakes, and I could hear sleigh bells in the background. And up through the parking lot comes a horse-drawn sleigh with Santa in it, and he got out and came up on the porch, where all of us children were standing, and it was the Ho Ho Ho — it was so real it was unbelievable. We all got presents out of this big bag that Santa had, and our names were on them and everything. He knew everybody in the room. After we started opening our gifts, he was gone. To this day, I don’t know who that Santa Claus was.
This event went on for several years. You reported this story very accurately