Santa Claus arrives

Santa Claus arrives

in a one-horse open sleigh,

takes us for a ride

Santa Claus arrived in a sleigh pulled by a full-size horse, not eight tiny reindeer. He didn't  land on the snow-covered rooftop at night. Instead, he drove through the fresh fallen snow right up to the front door on Christmas morning. He was dressed all in red with white trim and black boots, and he had a long white beard, but he did not have a little round belly. He was tall and slender, like the depictions of the third century Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, or the Victorian English Father Christmas, rather than the "right jolly old elf" in "A Visit from St. Nicholas" written by Clement Clark Moore in 1822. Santa didn't smoke a pipe, but he did have twinkly eyes, rosy cheeks, a nose like a cherry and a jolly laugh. In fact, he laughed a lot like my red-headed Uncle Joe, who was sitting inside my grandparent's house with the other uncles and aunts. Much to our delight, Santa Claus took my older sister and me for a short ride in the one-horse open sleigh. Then he kindly posed for this photograph. You can see that it's a really old photo because it's black and white and square and perforated around the edges. So this is proof that Santa Claus is real because seeing is believing. Just don't believe everything you hear about him. Go by your own experience.