Santa Claus

IT SNOWED the other morning, and my 3-year-old son, Little Solomon, ran into our bedroom (without knocking, of course) to happily announce that Santa was on his way. I was groggy, but his pronouncement forced me into a pivotal fatherhood moment - one that I'd already faced with his big sister Eve. "Son, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but . . . " My wife, LaVeta, chimed in. "Santa Claus is right in front of you, lying in bed....

In 1897, a little girl in New York City wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Sun, a then-great now-gone newspaper. It was Virginia's good fortune - and ours - that the letter fell into the hands of an editorial writer named Francis P. Church, who answered her gently and wisely. We publish this, partially because it's so wise and partially because editorial pages are short of its gentle wisdom. Mostly, we run it because we like it so much. What follows is as it appeared in the New York Sun of Sept.

Yes, Delaware County, there is a Santa Claus. Two days last week, he was spotted on the streets of Lansdowne during dinnertime. He visited every street. And a few days before that, he was at the Media Borough Hall - before he left for the Darby Fire Company, No. 1 station. On Tuesday, he was supposed to travel up and down the streets of Yeadon, escorted by eight fire trucks from the Yeadon Fire Company. And he was at the malls for more than a month. With such overwhelming evidence of his existence, how could there not be a Santa Claus?

Yes, Virginia, there definitely will be a Bruce Springsteen concert album package for Christmas. Officially announced yesterday by Columbia Records, the five-record set will be called "Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live - 1975-85. " It covers four tours - in 1975, 1978, 1980-81 and 1984-85 - and will be comprised of 40 songs, including numbers from each of Springsteen's seven albums. A 36-page book with lyrics will be included in the boxed set, which will resemble Columbia's recent Bob Dylan retrospective, "Biograph.

Warren Mercer, 83, who played Santa Claus for several generations of West Chester children and co-founded the annual Old Fiddlers Picnic in Chester County, died Friday at the Friends Hall nursing home in West Chester. Mr. Mercer was a lifetime resident of the West Chester area. He was born in East Bradford Township and worked as a plasterer, first in a business of his own and then, from 1957 until his retirement in 1979, for the West Chester University maintenance department. He and his wife, Phoebe, had lived for the last three years on New Jersey Avenue in West Chester.

STAMFORD, Conn. - A department-store Santa Claus who died with his wife and three grandchildren in a Christmas-morning house fire spent a long career trying to prevent danger as safety chief at a liquor company in Kentucky. A day after fire engulfed his daughter's upscale house in Stamford, Lomer Johnson was remembered fondly as a stickler for safety by a former boss at Louisville, Ky.-based liquor maker Brown-Forman Corp., where Johnson retired from his job as safety and security director several years ago. "He spent his career trying to keep others safe," retired Brown-Forman executive Robert Holmes Jr. said yesterday in a phone interview.

DENVER - Santa Claus is piling up more than presents this year. The big man's trackers at NORAD say he also broke records this Christmas Eve. Volunteers at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado were fielding 8,000 calls an hour Saturday afternoon, on pace to break a record. Also, Santa's NORAD Facebook page approached 920,000 "likes" by midafternoon. Last year, Santa had 716,000 "likes. " Volunteers at NORAD Tracks Santa said children started calling at 4 a.m. to find out where Santa was. "The phones are ringing like crazy," Lt. Cmdr.

Lots of people deck the halls (and the doors and windows) of their homes, sharing their holiday cheer and creativity with the world thanks to outdoor lights and decorations. But then there are the serious decorators: folks who decorate their homes and then entire Philadelphia city blocks. This isn't just decorating, it's creating holiday destinations. Take Alex Du. The Du home on the 1600 block of South 13th Street, easily the brightest and flashiest on an enthusiastically decorated block, has everything from LED lights shooting down the front of the house to a life-size Santa sitting on the stoop in an easy chair.

By Maria Archangelo My mother grew up in a Philadelphia rowhouse where men were irrelevant. The shooting death of her father - a rookie policeman killed in the line of duty in 1933 - left her mother alone to raise three girls. To help them survive, two maiden aunts moved in. Fanny and Ella were tough and stern. In a tintype, Aunt Ella looks like the mean neighbor who turns into the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz . Already old when they moved in, these ladies took care of the girls while my grandmother went out to work.

"Seems we're all so busy trying to beat the other fellow in making things go faster and look shinier and cost less that Christmas and I are sort of getting lost in the shuffle. " - Kris Kringle, "Miracle on 34th Street" Mary Landau can't help it. She's crying and pouting like an irritable 5-year-old who stands too long in line waiting for Santa Claus, only to find Santa scary and distant and phony and please, Mom, don't make me take a picture with that man! I'm telling you why. Turns out her Santa Claus is not coming to town.

By Frank Cerabino This is the time of year when we start to see a wave of Santa Claus-related crime. In Florida, we've already had a man described as the "Santa Claus burglar" - a white-bearded man who was caught on surveillance cameras as he broke into automobiles - as well as a man in a "Santa Claus beard" who broke into a McDonald's and was being sought by police. Meanwhile, police in South Carolina arrested a man in a Santa hat who was allegedly pretending to collect toys for a charity.

Special Events 10th Annual Taste of Success Featuring a dozen entrepreneurs competing for prizes in a cookoff and bakeoff contest. Jack's Firehouse, 2130 Fairmount Ave.; 215-232-9000. www.ewtasteofsuccess2011.eventbrite.com . $70; $27 students & clients. 12/2. 6-8 pm. Etc. Performance Series A work-in-progress series. Community Education Center (CEC Meeting House), 3500 Lancaster Ave.; 215 387-1911. $10; $8 seniors/students. Closes 12/4. Fairyland of Chemistry: Victorian Science Performance An original production based on 19th-century texts that helped Victorian-era children learn chemistry.

Deck the halls and set the DVRs, the holidays are back. The Grinch. Frosty. Charlie Brown. And, course, Santa. Like the holidays, they never get old. Here are some of the season's TV highlights:   Saturday Debbie Macomber's Trading Christmas (8 p.m., Hallmark Channel) A widow flies to Boston to surprise her daughter at Christmas, only to find she has flown off with a new boyfriend. But mom finds a romance of her own over the holiday.   Sunday Holiday Engagement (8 p.m., Hallmark Channel)

Celebrate "A Very Furry Christmas" beginning Friday at Sesame Place, which presents the new show for a 19-day holiday cycle. The celebration continues through Dec. 26, featuring three new shows: Elmo's Christmas Wish, Sesame Street Christmas, and Elmo's World Live! Happy Holidays. Also featured is The 1-2-3 Christmas Tree Show. The park will have 300 trees decorated with lights, toys, rubber duckies, and more. A 25-foot tree will be trimmed with choreographed lights and Sesame Street decorations.

We all have this vision of Santa Claus flying around on a sleigh pulled by reindeer, a big bag of packages tucked behind him. In reality, it doesn't work that way. Santa actually travels in the S-1, a red spaceship bigger than the Star Trek Enterprise with a central command station on the North Pole and black-clad elves who zip down ropes, Mission: Impossible -style. That's the version we get in Arthur Christmas, a new animation from first-time director Sarah Smith and Aardman Animations, the British company that brought us Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.