No need to remind me how long it’s been since setting foot through these doors. I’m well aware that my "bee-hind" hasn’t warmed the pew for going on six years now. Not since Corrie’s funeral. Now, don’t go judging how an elder for forty-odd years can up and quit coming to church. Your wife gets the cancer, and the doctors say they can’t do squat, and you try to pretend everything’s normal, but you can’t sing or even close your eyes and pray without thinking how empty the pew is next to you.

So six years ago this morning-Christmas 97, it was-I decided I couldn’t bear to sing about cattle lowing and merry whatnots. So instead of turning left onto Tweedsmuir, I kept right on going and found myself unlocking the back door to the bakery. My father probably rolled in his grave the minute my key entered the lock, and my son, John, who’s a minister out west, probably got red ears up there in his own pulpit. In my family, the bakery-any kind of work-is off limits on the Lord’s Day, and you can times that by ten on Christmas day.

But I didn’t give a hoot. I was in grief, you see, and it’s funny what the mind will do when you’re grieving. You’ll think thoughts you’d never believe when you were a young man. It’s not so much you’re thinking about your wife; you’re sort of thinking like her, sort of looking through her eyes, being her. I know it must sound crazy.

Anyway, the bakery always helps you forget about your troubles. You warm up the ovens and start mixing cookie dough, and the next thing you know it’s noon hour, and the place smells like cinnamon, and you’ve got piles of cookies and almond tarts.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. John gave me a look, too, when he found out what I’d been up to. You’ll be happy to know I didn’t make one shiny copper penny from my work that morning. Without really knowing what I was doing, I loaded all those baked packages in the delivery van, went downtown and handed it all out to the fellas at that re hab shelter across from the movie theatre.

Before then I hardly gave those fellas a fleeting thought, but Corrie always had a soft spot for them. "Somebody held that little baby once," she’d say. It’s funny the crazy things a grieving man will do. She must’ve laughed her head off up there when she watched me carrying box after box into that shelter. And the looks on those fella’s faces! I went home with such a warm-all-over feeling I didn’t feel guilty for missing the Christmas service.

That was the first Christmas. The next year, I made a couple of phone calls to the two local hospitals, and I figured out how many Christmas goodies needed to be made. So early on Christmas morning I crept in and placed a fancy wrapped baked goody beside every bed. The nurses helped me, of course. They wouldn’t let some crazy old man walk into the hospital in the wee hours pretending to be Santa!

I did that for a few years and nobody knew but the nurses, which suited me just fine. Corrie never liked any fanfare, you know. But then this pimply-faced University of Windsor journalist student apprenticing at the local rag came knocking on my door a week before Christmas last year and wanted to do a piece on my good will. He took my picture then splashed the whole thing on the front page.

Well guess what? Every cancer kid and terminal geriatric down at St. Joe’s couldn’t sleep that night and was up waiting for "Santa" when I tried to sneak in with my little packages. Course they were disappointed when they saw an old man in a Pioneer touque come clomping in.

Here’s where I knew you were getting involved. Last summer I was going through some boxes in the basement and what do I come across? A box of old Halloween costumes John used to wear before he grew up and preached the evils of Halloween to his own kids. Corrie had folded every one of those costumes into neat little bundles and had pinned a scrap of paper with the year on it. In 1963, it turns out, John-who was twelve at the time and as big as I am now-went as Santa Claus.

I know it sounds crazy, but I sometimes have thoughts-almost whispers-in my head, and I think it’s Corrie talking to me, even though a rational man would say they were my own thoughts anyway. I heard a voice that day, and I up and decided to go through those old boxes in the crawl space. Within fifteen minutes, I was standing in front of the mirror all decked out in a long white beard, a red suit and black boots.

Which, of course, brings me to what happened this morning and the reason I’m sitting here and telling you all this.

Last night-in the wee hours-I hung the Santa suit on the hook against the back wall of the bakery and set to work mixing batter and filling the ovens with tray after tray of bokkepootjes and stroopwafels and raisin bread-the whole shebang. For the first Christmas since becoming Santa, I turned the CBC on and listened to the choirs singing. It was as if a choir of angels was lined up in the alley singing just to me.

It was during "Silent Night" when the knock came from the back of the bakery. Now I’ve never been one to be scared, but a chill ran up and down my spine when I turned down the radio and crept to the back door to peek through the peep hole.

What I saw made my skin tighten up like a snare drum. There, in the back alley, was Joseph and Mary, holding a baby. Behind them stood three Wisemen and some shepherds. Well I nearly keeled over, but before I could do anything, Joseph knocked again and then leaned over and looked right into the peep hole-right into my eyeball-which startled me half out of my wits so that I stumbled over a mixing pan and landed square on my "bee-hind." Well I felt a little foolish after that, so I surprised even myself when I hid a wooden spoon behind my leg as a weapon and unlocked the door.

"We thought someone was here," Joseph said. Mary smiled. The baby she was holding was a doll, albeit mighty real looking.

"We’re in town to do a sunrise play in a local church," said a wiseman. "Everything’s set up so we went looking for coffee."

"Any room in the inn?" smiled Joseph. "All the Tim Hortons are closed."

I should have known right then you were up to something because next thing I’m doing is telling them I’ll put on a pot and would they like a slice of fresh raisin bread, too? Well, we finished our coffee and the shepherds downed two whole loaves of raisin bread between them-you’d think they’d been truly walking to Bethlehem all night they were so hungry-and I told them the whole story I just told you about Corrie and me being Santa every Christmas morning, and then Joseph up and says they had a little extra time so why don’t they help me deliver the gifts to the children.

So I took down the Santa suit, and we all grabbed a stack of boxes and piled into the bakery van under a perfect starry sky. I thought Corrie must have been crying with laughter watching all this. She’d always said there wasn’t a spontaneous bone in my body, and here I was cruising downtown in a Santa suit with a bunch of actors I’d met not one hour ago.

Well, you should have seen the looks on the kids’ faces when Santa Clause, accompanied by Mary and Joseph, came waltzing through the doors this morning. Even the emergency nurses came up to catch a glimpse and take a picture of us.

But then Joseph said they had to get going to the church, so I drove them back to their rental van in the mall parking lot and sat and watched their tail-lights disappear onto King Street in the early silvery light of Christmas morning. Nice folks, I thought. Good sense of humour showing up at the bakery in all their costumes. I drove slowly back to the bakery, parked in the alley and turned off the ignition. Everything was perfectly still, and I sat there for a while knowing exactly what "silent night" meant.

It was right then while leaning on my steering wheel-an old Santa in a beat up bakery delivery van-that I noticed baby Jesus looking at me in the rear view mirror. He was sitting upright on the seat, right where Mary and Joseph had been sitting. Well, did you see me jump? I fired up the old girl, threw her into drive and screeched out of that alley and onto William Street so fast you’d think I’d just robbed the CIBC.

Now our town’s not very big-we’ve only got a handful of churches and most of them are right near the downtown. I headed up William, but I didn’t even have to stop to see that the United church was still as dark as night, so I turned up Wellington, only to find that the Anglicans and Presbyterians were still counting sugar plumbs, too. So I headed over to St. Pete’s out behind the public library. There were some cars there, but not a soul to be seen. Then it was as if I wasn’t driving that van at all because it suddenly turned up Queen and then hung a right onto Tweedsmuir. Sure enough, there was the rental van sitting right in front of the church I hadn’t set foot in for six years.

I hit the brakes. I recognized lots of the cars parked there and I froze. My watch said 7 a.m. The service had started. How in the world could they do a Christmas play without the baby Jesus? But then that voice-call it Corrie’s, call it your own-said not to worry and to just go in. So I tore into the parking lot and screeched my tires right by the front doors. I leaped out of the van, threw open the glass doors and climbed the stairs into the foyer as fast as these old legs could carry me. One of the ushers looked at me in surprise, and then I remembered I was still wearing this old Santa suit. But my legs kept right on walking until I was standing at the back of the sanctuary and looking to the front of the church where the whole manger scene was set up: Joseph and Mary, the shepherds and Wiseman-and an empty manger.

I took a deep breath and marched up that aisle with the baby Jesus in my arms. Well, you saw me. The looks on everyone’s faces! You’d think I was some drunk from the east end who’d stumbled in from a Christmas Eve party. I almost lost my nerve and high-tailed it out of there, but I knew Corrie was watching. You could have heard a needle drop everything got so quiet when I placed that baby Jesus in the manger. When I turned around there were people crying and smiling at me. Mary even put her hand on my shoulder.

It was at that moment that I felt something change inside of me. The minute that baby’s head touched the hay in that manger, it was like someone had lifted a veil off me right then; everything got real clear; I knew I was home again. I have to think Corrie was smiling, too.

Anyway, that’s why I’m still sitting here, even though everyone’s gone. And you can expect that I’ll be back from now on and calling on you a little more often, too. I’m sorry for talking a little harshly to you this morning. I’m a bit out of practice. I just wanted to say thank you for sending your Son to me this morning.

I pray this all in His name, amen.