The Journey to Santa4California
Chapter One: The Man With the Conveniently White Beard
Chapter 1
The first time someone asked if I was Santa, I was standing in my local Tractor Supply in Watsonville, California.
Which, if you think about it, is probably not where most people expect to meet Santa Claus.
I wasn’t wearing red.
I wasn’t ringing a bell.
I was standing next to a pallet of livestock feed trying to remember whether my miniature cows preferred the sweet feed or the one with the slightly higher protein mix.
I had stopped by Tractor Supply to grab feed for my miniature cows — because even if Santa ever did exist in California, someone still had to feed the livestock.
That’s when I heard the whisper behind me.
“Mom… I think that’s Santa.”
Now, if you’ve never been mistaken for Santa before, you should know something.
Your brain doesn’t immediately know what to do with that information.
Mine certainly didn’t.
I was holding a fifty-pound bag of feed, wearing work boots, and thinking about cows. Becoming Santa was not on the day’s agenda.
But kids don’t operate on adult logic.
To them, a white beard is pretty convincing evidence.
I turned slowly.
A little boy stood there gripping the shopping cart like he’d just spotted something rare in the wild.
He stared at me.
I stared at him.
His mother looked at me with the slightly apologetic smile parents use when their child says something unexpected in public.
“Sorry,” she said quietly. “He just thinks—”
“It’s okay,” I told her.
Then the boy asked the question.
“Are you Santa?”
Now there are a lot of ways a grown man could answer that question while standing in Tractor Supply holding livestock feed.
You could laugh it off.
You could explain Santa lives at the North Pole.
You could say something practical and ruin the moment.
Instead, I leaned down a little and lowered my voice.
“Don’t tell anyone,” I said. “I’m checking on the reindeer feed.”
The boy’s eyes went wide.
Behind him, his mother started laughing.
And just like that, right there between the livestock supplies and the farm fencing aisle, I learned something important about the Santa business.
Kids don’t need perfection.
They just need someone willing to protect the magic.
At the time I didn’t know that moment would eventually lead to Santa4California.
But belief has a way of changing things.
Sometimes it changes a child’s day.
Sometimes it changes a man’s life.
Before you book, read my 2026 holiday guide to hiring a real‑beard Santa in California.
Leave a Reply