Yesterday's Santa and the Chanukah Miracle

Annie can't believe her eyes! The Santa in the mall looks so much like her grandfather's friend, Simon. A Jewish Santa? Annie lines up to get a closer look and ends up whispering her wish to him.Simon Greenbaum, flat broke, has taken the job at the Winter Castle to earn a few dollars between jobs, he tells her. And after all, with his long white beard, he looks just like Santa already. "Don't breathe a word to your Zaideh that you saw me here, " he says. "If you don't tell him that I'm a Santa Claus, I won't tell him what you asked for. It's a deal?"When Annie's parents find out, however, that she has asked Santa for a Christmas tree, they are disappointed and tell her she must learn to be her own person and stand up for her own beliefs in order to earn the respect of others.Meanwhile, Annie wants to help Mr. Greenbaum. At the Chanukah meal that evening, she gets her cousins to give her their Chanukah gelt. But when she returns to the mall with the money the next day, she finds he hasbeen fired from his job for not being able to name Santa's reindeer. Miraculously, though, he has been given a job in Menswear, instead. In a haHartt-Snowbell, Sarah is the author of 'Yesterday's Santa and the Chanukah Miracle', published 2002 under ISBN 9780613776851 and ISBN 0613776852.