Editor’s note: This column was first published Dec. 13, 2008.I’ve seen it written that a man’s life plays out in three phases.

Phase I: I believe in Santa Claus.

Phase II: I don’t believe in Santa Claus.

Phase III: I am Santa Claus.

Phases II and III came a lot earlier than expected for me.

When I was six, I was riding a bike around our neighborhood when Bill Kirkpatrick, my 5-year-old best friend, informed me there was no Santa Claus.

No warning. No provocation. Just a, ‘’Hey Jack. Do you know there is no Santa Claus? It’s really just your dad.’’

I did what any 6-year-old Santa believer would do when presented with such a blatant lie. I pulled Bill off his bike, beat the egg nog out of him and demanded to know who told him such a thing so I could go upside their head later with a yule log.

Turns out, Bill’s older brother, Stanley, had delivered the news, and he had a rather compelling reason to do it.

According to Stanley, if no one in the house believes in Santa there’s no reason to wait all the way until Christmas morning to open presents. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I dropped old St. Nick like an ugly Christmas sweater.

Ten years later, I became Santa Claus for a month.

I grew up in Erwin, Tennessee, a small town surrounded by the Cherokee National Forest in East Tennessee. Jobs were scarce for teens, with the family-owned grocery store and a relatively new McDonald’s making up most of the workforce for folks my age. I wanted to work at the Golden Arches since several of my friends worked there, but the waiting list was a long one.

In late November of my junior year in high school I caught a break when Erwin McDonald’s franchise owner Dave Motley offered me a deal: Be Santa Claus at the restaurant for the month of December, and I would be the first person hired when another position came open after the start of the new year.

I balked at first. We were talking 5 to 9 p.m., seven days a week from Dec. 5 until Christmas Eve, and Mr. Motley wanted the full meal deal — red suit, white wig, long, white beard and black shiny boots. Throw in a side order of crying kids and the Super Sized parents who inevitably think it’s funny to sit on Santa’s lap, and the $5 per hour I was being offered looked like chump change.

Still, a job was a job, and with the prospects of further employment down the road in the balance I became Santa .

It didn’t start well.

I was told to really make an entrance at McDonald’s on my first day, and boy, did I. When I burst through the door with a mighty ‘’Ho, Ho, Ho!’’ I scared one child into a lifetime of therapy. The elderly gentleman standing beside him dropped his coffee, called me everything but Kris Kringle and threatened to shoot me and my reindeer if I came near his house on Christmas Eve.

A week into the gig, I had the Santa thing down cold. Folks said I was a natural.

Little kids who were afraid of me when they entered the store had to be pried away from me by the time they left. Guy friends who teased me when they found out what I was doing soon became jealous when they realized their girlfriends had a crush on Santa .

The week before Christmas, an all-girl organization at the high school held its annual party for several of the underprivileged kids in town and asked me to be Santa.

I’ll never forget the excitement those kids displayed when Santa walked into the room, and I’ll never forget one of those children asking Santa to turn the water back on at his house so his mom could take a hot bath. It was, he said, the only thing that made her headaches go away.

I’m still not sure where my dad got the money to pay that water bill, but it was the first Christmas miracle I ever witnessed and I realized that my friend Bill was telling the truth 10 years earlier. My dad was Santa .

No wonder I was such a natural.