Letters to Santa: we didn’t have email, but we had Paul Shannon

Earlier today when I was at Kuhn’s Market, I overheard two women talking about their holiday plans, and one of them was telling a story about her 7 year old son Toby. She had both the other woman (and me) in stitches.

She’s been after her boy to write a letter to Santa, to give her some ideas on what he wants for Christmas; she said that when she picked him up from her mother’s house the other night, Toby informed her that she can stop pestering him, he sent a letter to Santa on the computer.

She called her mother and asked her if she’d helped him, she said no but her neighbor’s daughter had been over and was helping Toby send an email. The whereabouts of this missing letter was still unknown & Toby’s mom says she’ll be bald before Christmas gets here.

It got me to thinking about writing letters to Santa when I was a kid; we didn’t have email but we DID have a rocket!  Well, courtesy of WTAE-TV & “Paul Shannon’s Adventure Time”.  In the 1960s, when we still lived in town, I used to race home from school to catch this local kid’s show.  Mr. Shannon was a tall, soft spoken man who showed cartoons like “Kimba the White Lion” & “Space Angel”, and always had a studio audience of Cub Scouts or Brownies.  (Oh how I wanted to be one of those kids!)

I’m surprised how little I can find about Paul Shannon online—but this is just how I remember him

But come December (from 1965-1970), he would tell all the kids at home to send their “Letters to Santa” in care of the tv station, and he’d send them to the North Pole-- on Channel 4’s very own moon rocket!

(You have to remember, this was the 1960s—hippies, Vietnam & civil rights may have been on the news every night, but so was the excitement of astronauts and rockets.)

The shows (in those weeks leading to Christmas) would end with Mr. Shannon and a “rocket hatch”; we’d see bags of letters already inside the compartment, and Paul would still be holding a few, reading off the names and addresses of the senders before tossing them in with the others. We’d then be treated to some stock footage of one of the Apollo moon rockets blasting off from Cape Canaveral—I mean Pittsburgh, cough—on it’s way to Santa. And I swear to God, as a kid in the first, second & third grades, I didn’t doubt where that missile was heading for a second.

What I lived for though was the “transmissions from the North Pole”. We’d see Santa in front of his workshop, waving hello and telling Paul Shannon, yes, the latest batch of letters arrived safely. He’d then read off a couple of ‘em, remarking on the fine penmanship or telling the writer how proud he was of them for helping their mom around the house.

George Heid, 1902-1973: He not only played Santa on Adventure Time, but donated his time to work with hundreds of handicapped kids in the Pittsburgh area

I can’t find any clips of him online, but I can still hear his voice; always loving & genuine, I didn’t doubt he was the real deal for a minute either. I can still remember one year panicking over my letter not being read on the air & asking my mom “what if mine got lost somewhere on the way there?” and her telling me “It didn’t Doug, your dad talked to him.” Thank God!

Well, this Santa may not have read any of my letters, but thanks to some very generous parents (and one very attentive mom), I know SOMEONE certainly did.

I love you, Mom & Dad