A half-century of Santa: One family's Christmas tradition turns 50

guest · 2016-12-17

In 1966, two-year-old Steve Moritsugu’s parents took him to see Santa at Eaton’s in Toronto, where the youngster had his picture taken with the jolly old man.

The following year, the Moritsugus again made the trek from their Richmond Hill home to downtown Toronto and another department store Santa, but this time they didn’t return home with a photo: Steve cried throughout the shoot, and so his parents decided against buying a print.

Since then, however, the Moritsugus haven’t missed a December visit and photo with St. Nick, as siblings came along — Sue in 1967, Lynne in ’69, and Donna in 1972 — followed by spouses. Last weekend, the Moritsugu children, now in their 40s and 50s, returned to the Billings Bridge Mall for their 50th photograph together.

And for the sake of record-holding, it bears noting that Steve, who serves in the Canadian Forces, hasn’t appeared in every photo; it turns out that you can’t just up and leave Afghanistan or the U.S. simply because Jingle Bells is playing at the Rideau Centre.

There are also rules: Girlfriends and boyfriends, for example, don’t get in the frame until the knot has been legally tied. And close doesn’t count. “Lynne and Jeff got married on Dec. 29,” explains Sue, “so he was not in the 2001 photo, whereas Steve and Jennipher were married in September 2001, so she was in the photo.”

And there have been near-misses, like when the group had to beg the Rideau Centre Santa to stay open a few extra minutes, or when Steve and Lynne, returning from a vacation in Jamaica, had to rush directly from the airport to make the family reunion.

And there are logistics complicated by the fact that Sue and Lynne now live in Ottawa, Donna is in Toronto, and Steve is — well, he’s in Ottawa now, but you can’t count on that from year to year. Once, they all gathered in Kingston because he was posted there and unable to travel to Ottawa or Toronto. Another time, he flew in from England just in time for the photo.

Initially, the family excursions were an excuse to window-shop in downtown Toronto and perhaps buy a few gifts. “In 1974, when Hillcrest Mall opened in Richmond Hill, we started going there,” notes Sue. “But after a while we had to go to other suburban malls, after Steve refused to go close to home where his friends might see him.”

That phase eventually passed, and the family returned to Hillcrest. For most of the past dozen years, though, they’ve been congregating annually at Billings Bridge, where Sue recently retired as a pharmacist at Rexall (and where, incidentally, she has given Santa his flu shot — talk about responsibility). Planning the date of their visit with St. Nick can start as early as September.

“He’s the best Santa we’ve seen,” Sue insists. “He knows us now and every year he asks about Steve’s posting, and we’ve taken the album to show him.”

The original photos are kept, one to a page, in an album at their parents’ house in Richmond Hill. According to Sue, there are enough pages to keep them in Santas until they’re in their 90s.

“By then, he’ll have to come to us instead of the other way around.”