The mall Santa had many children ask for electric trains. "If you get a train," he would tell each one, "you know your dad is going to want to play with it too. Is that OK?"

Jim Cymbala, Pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle, tells the following story: It was Easter Sunday and I was so tired at the end of the day that I just went to the edge of the platform, pulled down my tie and sat down and draped my feet over the edge. It was a wonderful service with many people coming forward. The counselors were talking with these people. As I was sitting there I looked up the middle aisle, and there in about the third row was a man who looked about 50, disheveled, filthy. He looked up at me rather sheepishly, as if saying, "Could I talk to you?"

Little Bethany climbed up into Santa's lap in the mall. As soon as she was settled, Santa said, "And what would you like for Christmas this year?"

Back in 1891, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of such classics as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped, gave a rather odd gift to the daughter of a friend of his. This friend, Henry Ide, once joked that Christmas was not the happiest day of the year in his household. His 14-year-old daughter, Annie, had been born on Christmas; she always complained she got cheated out of a separate birthday party.