Victorian zealots of overembellished style, with the help of caricaturist Thomas Nast and other illustrators, pretty much determined how old Santa would look right down to the present time -- a robust white-whiskered and red-cheeked senior citizen wearing ridiculous bright red togs trimmed in white fur.

Children all over America, the great melting pot of cultural traditions, have grown up with that omnipresent image of cheer for seven or eight generations now. It's pretty well a part of the somewhat unifying, if recently tattered, fabric of our national consciousness.

My memory of the belief in Santa lingers in the mid-1940s when I was an innocent -- and need I say, gullible -- youngster. However, when I hit the age of seven or so, I was so much more sophisticated than my younger brother and sister that I determined there was no such thing as Santa Claus. Other kids at school had told me what a fool I had been these many years.

Of course, I rushed to impart this revelation to my siblings, poor victims of adult subterfuge that they were. They, in turn, ran immediately to my mother to report my blasphemy. But I didn't care. I was protected by the armor of truth.

This great upheaval occurred in the few weeks before Christmas. My brother and sister refused to listen to my well-documented proof that Santa was a mere figment of somebody's overwrought seasonal imaginings. The turmoil died down, but my confidence in my new knowledge remained unshaken.

Unshaken, that is, until one really stormy December day just before Christmas. The hallway telephone -- a wall-mounted model like you see in those old 1930s movies -- rang. Two short rings and a long. The operator's signal that the call was for us, Number 7 on the party line.

Following the usual protocol, my mother answered the phone.

"Hello," she intoned loudly enough to call my attention from the living room. "Who do you want? Johnny? You want to talk to Johnny?"

Then she yelled ever more loudly, "Johnny, Johnny, it's for you." At my young age I rarely -- actually, never -- received telephone calls. Who could this be? I jumped up on the chair my mother had pulled up to the phone so I could reach.

"Hullo," I mumbled.

"Ho, ho, ho," rumbled the voice on the other end of the line. "This is Santa Claus. Ho, ho, ho. I'm calling to find out what you want for Christmas!" I was stunned. I was shocked. I completely forgot that I had so recently doubted the existence of this purveyor of toy trucks and cars, woodburning sets, candy and oranges.

"Uh, I want...uh, I want..." Somehow I uttered a brief list of items I had to have and Santa ho, ho, hoed a few more times.

It may have been the next year that I finally abandoned the Santa myth and went on from there. But, by then, I was not even tempted to ruin the good time for my younger siblings and friends. In fact, I joined the great Santa conspiracy that year and have passed it along to two more generations since then.

When my grandchildren and their cousins question me about Santa Claus these days, I sometimes report on my experience from long ago, when Santa Claus called long distance from the North Pole just to talk to me -- a doubting brat who had not really been good enough to deserve the red wagon and other goodies that the forgiving fat man brought that year.