{"id":4044,"date":"2002-05-30T21:09:39","date_gmt":"2002-05-30T21:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/?p=4044"},"modified":"2014-09-03T00:09:03","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T00:09:03","slug":"santa-in-my-backyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/santa-in-my-backyard\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa in My Backyard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Submitted Anonymously<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday, Friday the 22nd of November, I was preparing to smoke a turkey in my backyard. I was practicing for our first smoked Thanksgiving<\/a> turkey. (I was practicing because I didn’t want to fail under the pressure of 17 visiting relatives next week).<\/p>\n

Anyway, I had been at it for most of the day. I was tinkering with my snow blower in the garage for a while and I went to check on the bird. But when I got there I found Santa<\/a> sitting on my bench and feeding greens to two reindeer! I was stunned!<\/p>\n

Santa<\/a> looked up at me and said “Hello, Paul. Have you been a good boy this year?”. I gulped. I have always believed in Santa<\/a> but I am a man of 54 years now. It has been a long time since I had a face-to-face conversation with Santa<\/a> Claus. I think the last time was in 1954, at a Montgomery Wards in Toledo. I can’t believe Santa<\/a> remembered me after all these years.<\/p>\n

I didn’t sit on his lap. I’ve put on a little weight since the last time I saw Santa<\/a>. And besides, I was really wondering if I was a good boy this year. My wife told me the other day that I wasn’t a very good boy at all this year. I thought she was kidding but the thought struck me that maybe Santa<\/a> was there to give me bad news.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know, Santa<\/a>. What do you think?” I said. Santa<\/a> gave a hearty ho-ho-ho and a smile and said I was still a good boy. Then he apologized for stopping at my house unexpectedly. He said that he was training a new reindeer named Gomer (he’s the one on the left in the picture) and suddenly Nan (the reindeer on the right) got a little sick in her tummy.<\/p>\n

Santa<\/a> said Nan smelled my smoking turkey and told Santa<\/a> she would feel better if she could rest for a minute on my patio. He saw some fresh greens there and picked them for Nan to nibble on, hoping it would help make her feel better. Santa<\/a> said he only stopped at my house because he knew I was a good boy and still believed in him.<\/p>\n

Santa<\/a> and I had a nice visit. I told him I felt honored to have him at my home and that he was welcome any time. I offered him some smoked turkey but he said he needed to get going. I explained to Santa<\/a> that nobody would believe me if I told them that the real Santa<\/a> was in my backyard. In fact, I said to him, people are going to think I am a little crazy. Santa<\/a> merely laughed a little and asked what he could do to help. I asked him if it was okay if I took his picture. He said that would be fine if I could hurry.<\/p>\n

So that’s what I did and this is the picture that proves it. That is my backyard and that’s Santa<\/a> sitting on my bench feeding greens to Gomer and Nan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Submitted Anonymously Yesterday, Friday the 22nd of November, I was preparing to smoke a turkey in my backyard. I was practicing for our first smoked Thanksgiving turkey. (I was practicing because I didn’t want to fail under the pressure of 17 visiting relatives next week). Anyway, I had been at it for most of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":10,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-north-pole","category-santa-sightings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}