Bernice Chamberland was my grandmother. I asked her about Santa back in 2004.Â
Tell me about Santa Claus.
That bum? I’m not a good person to ask because my brothers, especially Bill, were jokers. And Bill would tell me that there wasn’t any Santa Claus, and that people used to just dress up as him and do all that dirty stuff. Of course my mother was dead then. So I don’t have any pleasant memories of Santa Claus.
I tried to believe in Santa Claus, but then they would tell me don’t be stupid, how could anybody like that come down a chimney?
I used to think that there might be one and I’d run downstairs for Christmas. That’s when the coal was in the stocking. Nobody was going to go out and buy me any presents and that was the joke. I was six when I got the coal. And it would be hanging up behind our gas stove. That went on for a couple of years anyway. I’d go to get my stocking and they’d say don’t be stupid, you know what’s going to be in it anyway.