Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - December 6 - Santa Claus

I have a very vague recollection of going to a Christmas party at one of my dad's fraternal organizations, perhaps the Lions, and talking to Santa Claus. But I don't recall annual visits to a department store for a visit. There were so many of us children though, it may have been too big of an undertaking.

1978

1977

I did bring my children to visit Santa, though, starting in 1977, when Sarah was not yet a year old. I told about the encounter with Santa in an earlier post here, so I won't repeat the story. But I will share the picture again at left.

The next year, 1978, Sarah was almost two, and a little scared of Santa Claus. The picture, at right, looks like the same setting as the previous year with a house in the background in the photo at right. I hope I wasn't really sitting on Santa's lap as I gave birth to a baby boy on Christmas Eve that year and might have cut off the circulation in his leg. I'm not sure exactly when the photo was taken but I would think it was somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.

The following year was just a little different. This was a special year as Santa made an early visit to my children's cousin's house. Jason, Jeffrey, Sarah and Josh got a private audience with the man with a bag. Josh was almost 1 year old and not quite sure of what to think about Santa.

After that, waiting in line to see Santa seemed kind of blasé. I mean, once you've had a private audience do you still want to stand in line to see Santa? Well, apparently they did because we had a number of other pictures of the kids with Santa. Jordan came along in 1982, and he had to have his chance at it, too. 

So we continued with annual visits for a while as seen below. 

But while I love looking back at these photos of my children, I find great joy in seeing my grandchildren with Santa. There's something about Christmas in a child's eyes that takes my breath away.

"The Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories (ACM) allows you to share your family’s holiday history twenty-four different ways during December! Learn more at http://adventcalendar.geneabloggers.com.”