Satan's Village

Oops. Santa. Santa's Village. Sorry. Must have been channeling the church lady (how annoying that I couldn't find the link - NBC, if you are going to hoard all of your videos, could you please at least make sure that they are LINKING?!).

I was volunteered by my loving, living-history-museum-employee mother to do the PR for Santa's Village - the 2006 “Event of the Year” by the State of Alabama Bureau of Tourism, that is going to wow visitors yet again in 2008 with a new twist on the attraction. Santa’s Magic Glasses will showcase the hundreds of thousands of twinkling lights in bursts of rainbow colors. Santa’s Village 2008 will also feature an enchanted ice maze for children to explore.

Can you tell I've been working on the release already?

While I'm sure I will post again about this soon enough, this particular post is not about the PR.

I was scouring Google images for happy holiday images for my nauseatingly perky flier when I came across another Santa's Village from my very distant past. Check out that photo - yesssss. Anyway, some guy was posting on this Americana site about his remembrances of the place in Lake Arrowhead, Calif., right near San Bernardino, where we used to live when I was a little kid.

"I had the privilege of visiting the park only twice, once as a child and once just before it went out of business in 1998. What impressed me the most as a kid, besides the shocking pink shake roof and bumble bee monorail, were the giant cement mushrooms. As an adult, it was how many employees had missing teeth."

HILARIOUS! We, too, visited this park and you can ask my brother - we, too, were awed by the Santa awesomeness. I'm happy to report that we never returned back there as adults to be thoroughly disappointed by the place.

It's funny how differently you remember things as a child than the way they actually are. Wish I still perceived things the way I did back then, actually.

Santa's Village 2.0, Huntsville version, is much cleaner and classier. It's actually Alabama Constitution Village - where Alabama's founding father introduced us into statehood in 1819 - all dressed up in lights and fake snow for Christmas. No giant cement mushrooms. And all of our happy, shiny volunteers and staff have their teeth... at least the front ones.

Holy flashback, Batman. Anyone else have a place like my Santa's Village?