Today, two Christmas firsts in one hit! Warning: You may not want your children or grandchildren to read this post - it may shatter Christmas beliefs.... The firsts featured today are the FIRST store Santa Claus or if you want to be really brutal, the first Santa Impersonator and the first store to employ a Santa impersonator . Logically, this would be the one and the same story, but this, like many other claims to Christmas firsts, is contentious. The first “Santa” - Many sources, verify that James Edgar, in Brockton, Massachusetts, commonly known as “Colonel Jim was the first department store Santa Claus in 1890 . Edgar, the store owner, had a Santa costume tailored especially for him ( he was certainly the right build for a Santa figure) and a few weeks before Christmas 1890 he made his first appearance. Many years later a man who’d been a boy that day reminisced: “ My parents had taken me over to the Boston store [Edgar’s] on Main S...
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