Ho Ho Ho A Jewish Santa Clause?

When I was 6 or 7, Cousin Burl Barer was still going to High School in Walla Walla where I lived at the time. He also was working nights and weekends at the local radio station KTEL. Burl's official title was "staff announcer" , it consisted of playing country music during the day, then at night, he could play the rock and roll that he and his peers wanted to hear. We did not know that this would be the beginning of a successful radio career for him. KTEL was small and a somewhat cornball organization, it had a tradition of doing a remote broadcast at Christmastime. One of the staff announcers would be Santa Clause at JJ Newberry's ( a well known national departments store with a huge toy department) he would ask children to tell what they wanted for Christmas and it go out over the radio. Probably so the real Santa would hear (rumor had it that he was a listener--Oh well). One year that duty went to Burl, my parents took me to Newberry's and told me not to tell anyone that "Santa" was really my cousin. When it was my turn to step up to see Santa, he asked if I was "any relation to Burl Barer", that was a difficult concept for me to fathom at the time so I said, "that's you"
Because he made a great Santa, Burl got to hand out gifts at the family Chanukkah party that Saturday night.