While I was never a scoffer about Santa Claus – I didn’t go around trying to burst the bubble of my first grade compatriots – I was never a thorough believer.

I had been told how Santa would come down a chimney, but I couldn’t help but notice that we didn’t have one. We did have a flue that descended into the basement at 104 Navajo Road in Springfield that was attached to an incinerator – a staple of many homes of that bygone era.

I couldn’t imagine St. Nick squeezing into our home that way.

I also became suspicious of various Santas I encountered while shopping with my parents. The sheer number of them, which my mother described as “Santa’s helpers,” didn’t bolster my faith.

A sign at the Sears store in West Springfield – Sears was in the building that is currently Bob’s Furniture – also cast doubt. In Santa’s absence, it read that Santa was taking a break feeding the reindeer. Naturally I wanted to see his reindeer and I sort of knew that wasn’t a strong likelihood there was a team of flying reindeer secreted somewhere at Sears.

Still I went along with the gag. My parents didn’t over emphasize the whole Santa myth, but they didn’t squash it either.

My faith did get a significant renewal until one fateful night when there was a knock on the front door. We seldom used the front door so it was an event in itself that someone was there.

Either my father or mother answered the door and there standing before them was a representative of Western Union. Now I knew what a telegram was as I had heard speak of them but I had never seen any. Generally I knew that telegrams were reserved for important news.

The telegram was addressed to my brother Patrick and I. What?

It was from Santa Claus extolling us to be good and wishing us a Merry Christmas.

I was immediately taken in. I didn’t have the capacity for enough cynicism to doubt that a real guy named Santa Claus had sent an actual artifact as important as a telegram.    

I was sold.

I’m not sure just how long I basked in the glow of that newfound faith, but I’m sure I was rock solid for that Christmas.

I still have the “Santa-gram” as it was called. Of course it was just another product that Western Union in its dotage was hawking. In a world in which long distance telephone calls were increasingly common Western Union was trying to repurpose its products.

Fast forward many years and I got to play Santa several times while I’m at WREB in Holyoke. There are few responsibilities more serious than that and I took the job with some trepidation.

I didn’t want to be the guy who caused any kid to question Santa’s existence. My fear was doubled one year when my wife brought our very young nephew to see me. I’m happy to report he proclaimed to Mary that he had seen “the real Santa.”

At this time of year, memories come bubbling up to the surface. Hopefully they are good ones as Christmas is a time of year we instinctively want to go right. We want the petty differences between family members to go away. We want to have the time off from work to rest and renew. We want to have the fiscal resources to do the holiday correctly.     

And, more often than we would like, the realities of life interferes with our aspirations for a joyous Noel. Your in-laws won’t talk to you. You can’t get time off and money is tight, while the list of gifts is long.

The true magic of the holiday is when it allows us to transcend life for a welcomed few days or even a few hours.

I hope you have a merry Christmas.

Agree? Disagree? Drop me a line at news@thereminder.com or at 280 N. Main St., East Longmeadow, MA 01028. As always, this column represents the opinion of its author and not the publishers or advertisers of this newspaper.