One of Pekin’s traditions of “Christmas of times past” is the downtown Santa House, where children can meet Santa Claus and tell him what they’d like for Christmas. The Santa House this year was again a part of Christmas on Court on Dec. 2, sponsored by the Pekin-Area Chamber of Commerce.
Older Pekin residents and native will remember the Santa House during Decembers of the mid-20th century. In those days, amidst the bustle of holiday shoppers, the Salvation Army band would be posted at the corner of Capitol and Court streets, playing holiday music and handing out hot tea and hot chocolate, while Santa would meet children at “his” house on the opposite corner.
This local tradition, however, experienced a hiatus of about 35 years. As Pekin expanded eastward and developed a new business district on East Court Street, the downtown area declined and families did less and less of their shopping there. And so the Santa House passed into local history. Pekinites would instead take their children to see Santa Claus at the Pekin Mall, until the mall failed in the 1990s.
In 2005, however, Pekin resident Scott Lauss and other volunteers – including Greg Ranney, Emily Lambe, and David and Kay Lock – went to work remodeling and beautifying an old shed so the old Santa House tradition could be revived.
In December that year, the new Santa House was placed on the Tazewell County Courthouse lawn, where more than 500 children came through the meet St. Nicholas.
Since then, the Santa House has returned each year as a part of the Christmas on Court celebrations.
Though the story of Santa Claus and his magical reindeer has long been associated with the joy and magic of the Christmas festival, it took a while for earlier generations of Pekinites to pick up the tradition. As we noted 11 years ago, Pekin’s downtown “Holiday Concert” on 26 Dec. 1879 featured a cantata in which six children awaited the coming of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
However, the concert’s handbill says nothing of Santa’s reindeer (a tradition that was invented by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823, who was also responsible for the transformation of the Catholic St. Nicholas of Myra into a “jolly old elf”). However, the concert did feature a “Frost King,” three Christmas fairies, Santa’s two attendants, dwarfs named Drako and Krako, and the six goddess of Dreams, Mirth, Joy, Peace, Love, and Hope.
