This is the true story of the effort to convince my five-year-old daughter of the veracity of Santa Claus. That effort has resulted in this web site -- visited each year by millions of believers in Santa Claus worldwide.

Santa and I go way back.

As a child, I loved Santa and Christmas. I loved the excitement of Christmas Eve and listening to Santa get closer from the news reports on the radio. I loved staying up all night with my brothers and sisters, speculating on where Santa was and how he did it every year.

I don't remember a thing that Santa brought me in those years. That was never really important.

What was important was that the Big Guy meant a season of magic and warmth. It meant cookies and candy canes, Christmas trees and lights, singing and merriment by all around me.

It was love -- pure and simple.

Somewhere along the line, I got older. But Santa was always there every year, no matter how old I got. Those Christmas Eves with my brothers and sisters faded away. But Santa never changed, in spite of the fact that I stopped writing to him. I never forgot him and I never stopped believing in him.

Ever.

When I got married and had a little girl, a terrible thing happened one day to her at school.

Another five-year-old, probably a kid on Santa's naughty list, told my daughter Aubree that Santa doesn't exist.

She came home in tears with this awful story about Santa being a big fake. She said Christmas was invented by parents who use Santa to bribe and compel their kids into good behavior.

It devastated her and it made me angry. I vowed to do something about it.

I tried talking to Aubree. But she would not believe me. The cynical bitterness of her peers had turned her. She was, at the tender age of five, a non-believer.

I did not know what to do. All I wanted that Christmas was for her to see that Santa was indeed real, that the season was important on many levels and that it should be held dear by all. But nothing I said or did could sway her.

So I did what any true Christmas purist would do: I wrote Santa a letter and explained my Christmas wish. And that's when I received contact from Elf Ernest -- the head of Santa's Public Relations Department.

Ernest attacked the problem with all the seriousness an elf could muster.

Using the technology of the day, Ernest sent Aubree a fax from the North Pole, acknowledging her doubts and encouraging her to fax back any questions she might have about Santa Claus and Christmas. Every day he sent a fax that answered her questions woven into a story line about what Santa was doing at the North Pole to prepare for Christmas.

Aubree took it all in with giggles and smiles. I was sure she wasn't convinced of anything yet but she was at least enjoying herself.

One day early in December we took a trip to a Christmas tree farm and cut down a tree. On the way home, Aubree deliberated over what we should name the tree.

My wife was beside herself over Aubree's obsession with this crazy idea. Who ever heard of giving a Christmas tree a name?

Well, Aubree had heard it from Elf Ernest.

Ernest had said in the Update from the North Pole the day before that Santa always gave his Christmas tree a name because it was a living thing. So, Aubree named our Christmas tree Wally. And, as Ernest advised, Wally was watered and fed everyday. We talked to Wally and made him feel loved.

At that point, I knew Aubree was taking Ernest seriously.

When the update said that Santa had attended a Christmas devotional the weekend before Christmas, she could identify because she had done the very same thing.

When an update said that Santa got in trouble with his wife because he spent too much time on his computer the night before, Aubree could related because the same thing had happened to me.

When explaining why Santa didn't work on Sundays, Aubree totally understood because we believe the same thing.

When Santa prayed, Aubree saw him more like her. He became in those few weeks more of a real, everyday person. He was no longer this phantom gift giver who checked to see if you were "good".

On the day before Christmas Eve Aubree found a package on the porch from Elf Ernest. It contained a map of the world and instructions for Aubree to follow on Christmas Eve day.

Starting at around 7am the fax machine starting ringing and for the whole day, every hour, Aubree received a special Update from the North Pole.

These updates gave her suggestions for how to fill her time during the day and told her where Santa was headed next.

Taping a piece of yarn to the map Aubree marked Santa's course throughout the day, the map showing a crazy line of his travels in marking major cities in the world he had already visited.

And every passing hour the map showed that Santa was getting closer and closer to our house.

By the time it came for bed that night Aubree was wound up tighter than a spring. She was filled with hope and anticipation and light. If she had any doubts about Santa at all she surely didn't show them.

As I began my fatherly duties that night, walking in my bare feet to the back of the car with all the other dads in our apartment complex equally engaged, I was anxious and excited too. The effort had worked and we had a most memorable Christmas.

By the following Christmas Aubree had a little sister. And she demanded of Ernest to begin the updates as soon as possible.

Little did I suspect they would become a tradition. But during this second Christmas season Aubree went from a Santa-doubter to a Santa-promoter.

She took her updates to school and showed them to her friends. She passed them around at family gatherings. Before we knew it, we had requests coming from all over to be added to the fax distribution list. By the time Christmas rolled around, the faxes were going out to over 70 people.

The next season, it got downright costly.

Faxing that many updates, especially to a few international locations, was too much for me to handle. We started to look for another way to do it.

Being a computer geek it was not hard to want to take it online. I was one of the first real pioneers online in 1989 -- at least as a consumer.

I possessed no technical skills myself but I was quick to embrace the cool factor of the Internet. Back when less than 100,000 people worldwide were online, I registered the domain name Merry Holidays.com and put the Updates from the North Pole there.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Just as things snowballed with the faxed updates over the years the online updates have proven just as popular.

Our merry little web site was very popular at Christmas time. But it lay dormant the rest of the year. One spring day I got an offer to sell the name Merry Holidays and I accepted it, hoping to recover at least a little of the expense we put out on the effort. I then re-registered under a new site name, My Merry Christmas -- and this is where we have been ever since.

The great community of the Internet has always responded well to our holiday offerings. As time has passed, folks would email in their own experiences or ask questions. Over time, we built My Merry Christmas into one of the largest libraries on Christmas information online.

Aubree is an adult now. She is the eldest of our seven children. And she helps now to coordinate the efforts of Elf Ernest in our home.

It should come as no surprise, really. After all, the name Aubree means "ruler of elves".

A year or two ago, as we were preparing for the season by untangling a wad of Christmas lights to put on our house, I shared a tender moment with my eldest daughter as she confessed to me that her favorite time of year was at Christmas.

Aubree told me she loved the excitement and the warmth and the love we shared in doing everything that we do.

Ernest has played a big part in that. He taught her to take Christmas to others. Each year, she coordinates the Twelve Days of Christmas. That's where she plots with her siblings a surprise for a neighbor family for the twelve consecutive days before Christmas.

They start planning right after Halloween. They download articles from My Merry Christmas to add flavor to their little gifts, teaching and sharing holiday warmth with each doorbell ditch.

Naturally, the suspense of trying not to get caught twelve days in a row gets a little intense. There are giggles to constantly stifle and, honestly, it is hard to keep all seven of them quiet in the cold, dark December nights.

But the spirit of Christmas, so expertly taught to them by Elf Ernest and by Santa, compels them to act each year. And each year it is a tremendous blessing for them.

After that fateful first Christmas, I received a personal letter from Ernest. He told me in the letter that since I worked so hard to help my daughter believe in Santa again that I was eligible for an honorary elf assignment.

It took my breath away! Me? An elf? Working for Santa? How good can it get? I jumped at the chance.

So these days, around this time of year, I work in spreading the news around that Ernest sends me.

Santa doesn't have the resources to buy advertising time or to publish this stuff himself.

He doesn't want anyone to get the wrong idea anyway. He has always worked by word of mouth. It's good business, if you think about it. Christmas is taken advantage of by so many to make money. So Santa-- the REAL Santa-- keeps things kind of low key.

This web site-- mymerrychristmas.com-- is actually a personal effort of mine. But it is strictly regulated by Ernest and the PR department at the North Pole.

We try to be mindful of all the cultures of the world in relating news about Christmas and Santa Claus. We pay very close attention to promoting love and peace and harmony amongst all people. That, after all, is the message of Christmas.