The Day I Met Santa Claus
My name is Billy Ray. I have been down on this sentence since 2004. Thankfully, I will end this journey in 2029.
I read your article on Edovo and I thought with Christmas just around the corner I would share one of my favorite Christmas memories. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo I can send. I hope that does not matter. Here is a timesheet photo.
Ask me if I believe in Santa Claus and I will have to say yes. I am 54 years old and no I am not crazy. Allow me this opportunity to share with you an amazing story of an encounter I had in 1996 that forever changed my attitude about the most wonderful time of the year.
This actually began in 1995 when I had my first incarceration in the county jail and I would lose my best friend, which was my grandmother on my mom’s side, on Thanksgiving Day.
The following March I would be released and my dad would help me get a job at a local Buds Discount City, which was a division of Walmart.
By December of 1996, I had made my way from stockman to department manager over four departments including paint, hardware, sports, and automotive.
One of the rules for department managers was they had to know how to operate cash registers and assist the frontline when needed.
I was raised in a Christian home and I have always heard the biblical story of Jesus’s birth, but I also heard of Santa Claus, Rudolph, and Frosty. And so Christmas meant nothing more to me than stories told by good hearted family members around a lit tree. Granny always made Christmas special, and since this would be my first Christmas without her, I would not be there either.
So as December rolled around that year and the store was getting decorated and the Christmas music was being played, I really was not in the Christmas mood.
Then I was called to open a register and after checking out an elderly woman I met him.
He was an elderly little chubby man with a snowy white mustache and beard. He was wearing a yellow t shirt, red suspenders, red pants, and a red hat. He had four shopping carts loaded down with toys. He bought out our toy department, games, stuffed animals, sporting goods, and other things. And he paid for it all with cash.
I laughed and he asked, “What is so funny, young man?” I said, “Sir, I don’t mean any disrespect but you look like someone familiar.”
He said, “You mean him?” He showed me his driver’s license and his real name was Kris Kringle and he was from North Carolina.
I honestly thought it was some Christmas joke so I wished him a Merry Christmas and he left. I didn’t think about it until the next day when I went to the mailbox and picked up a local newspaper called The Enterprise Ledger. The headline on the front page read, “Yes, Enterprise, there is a Santa Claus.”
A picture showed Mr. Kringle dressed as Santa Claus sitting in a Victorian style chair with a little girl sitting on his lap and an elderly woman standing beside him.
The article went on to say that Mr. Kringle was a multibillionaire who was dying of cancer and he wanted to give all he had to those less fortunate. The child was an orphan and the woman was a nursing home resident.
But it was Mr. Kringle’s last statement that forever changed my attitude about Christmas.
He said, “I can do no more than what my Lord of Lords and King of Kings did when he gave all he had for those of us less fortunate, which is all of us.”
Christmas is not some story that good hearted family members tell around a lit tree, nor is it about wonderful music that we only hear once a year.
It is really not even about a baby born some 2000 plus years ago in a manger. No, Christmas is about a celebration of the greatest true origin story ever told, how God shed his divinity, put on humanity, lived a sinless life among sinful people for 33 years, took our place on a cross, and rose three days later.
Mr. Kringle has long gone to be with his Savior, but his message still rings true.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. Happy Birthday, Jesus.
