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*By Jennifer McDaniels, Harlan Enterprise*
Just as iconic as the Sears & Roebuck Santa who appeared every year in small-town catalogue stores across America, listening to long lines of children with their Christmas wish lists, is the man from Benham who has portrayed the jolly man in red for almost seven decades. Well, he’s at least iconic in the Tri-Cities and very much loved and adored by generations of families.
At 93, Marcus Ealy said there had to be a reason why God still had him on this Earth and relatively in good health. He looks at his Santa suit hanging in his closet, which is getting a little ragged around the fur-trimmed cuffs with the passage of time, and he says, “I’m here for the children.”
While Ealy is beloved by the young and old alike for his kindness and eagerness to pray with folks no matter the time or location, he has a particular bond with children. You can see it in the twinkle of their eyes as they gaze up at the man who they really think is Santa Claus and whisper their Christmas dreams in his ear.
You don’t play Santa for 69 years and not develop an affinity for children. For Ealy, he also carries a burden for their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
“Oh, I just love children!” Ealy exclaims. “I love their innocence and their easiness to trust. They love so big and so deep, not holding anything back. Us adults, well, we could learn to be more like the children we once were.”
The thousands of children Ealy has held on his knees and “ho ho ho’d” with through the years—either as the Sears Santa, portraying Santa at area schools, company and organization functions, parades, or nursing homes—have become parents and even grandparents. They make it a point to take their own children to Ealy during the holidays, and even the newest generation of Tri-Citians have become convinced that he is, in fact, the real deal.
Ealy is so loved in the Tri-Cities that when he missed playing Santa a couple of years ago due to illness, many would not even think about taking their children to see a different one. Tri-Citians take their Santa seriously, too. There are a few things Tri-Citians will quarrel with you about, and that’s how important coal is, Lynch and Cumberland producing some of the state’s best athletes, Benham being the best thing to happen to International Harvester, Headless Annie existing on Black Mountain, and Marcus Ealy being the real Santa Claus.
“Being Santa is just the way that I was,” Ealy said. “And it’s the way I am still today. If I can bring any joy to anyone’s life—a child’s life, a sick person’s life, or an old person—then I’ve done my job. I love the happiness that this old suit brings. I love strutting around in it.”
Many would agree that it’s not the suit that causes the happiness, but the man wearing it. Ealy is known for his compassion, friendly disposition, and encouraging spirit. He served in the Armed Forces after high school and became just as devoted a man of service in his community. He and his late wife, Joyce, were long involved in their church, civic programs, and helping their neighbors.
The jolliness that is exhibited while Ealy is wearing his Santa suit is still evident during the other 11 months of the year. For many, it’s hard to discern where Santa ends and Ealy begins. He’s often considered one and the same, and there’s a good number of Tri-City children who do not know otherwise. They are convinced he’s Santa, and that his trousers, T-shirt, suspenders, and veteran’s cap are simply his summertime attire.
“I used to kid with my wife that I don’t know what they are going to put on my tombstone: Marcus Ealy or Santa,” Ealy chuckled. “I guess they will put my name on it. I guess they’ll have to know that it’s really Marcus Ealy there.”
Thousands of faces flood Ealy’s memory—children he has listened to, shared the true meaning of Christmas with, and even prayed with. There’s one face he cannot forget, although it’s been 69 years. It’s the face of a young girl who walked into Cumberland’s Sears store when Ealy first started working there in the 1960s.
Ealy said they had decided to have a Santa night, and he was the one chosen to don the red suit.
“People were coming in left and right,” Ealy recalled. “Mamas would bring their babies in, and I would hold them and go on and on with them. This one lady came in with her little girl about 7 or 8 years old. She came up to me and I was just smothered with people. She kept tugging on my sleeve. I said, ‘Honey, I’ll be with you in just a minute when I’m done with this little fellow.’ She kept tugging at me, and I finally got to her turn. I said, ‘Listen. What can I do for you?’ By her looks, well, it looked like she needed a lot more than toys. It looked like her mommy stuck her down in the washtub and just pulled her right out. Her hair was all a mess. It was a heartbreaking situation to me trying to figure out what she must be going through.”
And so, I asked her what I could do for her, and she said, ‘Santa Claus, I asked you last year for a doll and you know what? I didn’t get nothing.’”
That just about broke my heart into pieces. I started thinking about my own sons and how they had things, and how people coming into the store made big purchases, and here’s this little, beautiful girl telling me she didn’t get anything for Christmas last year and that I was the one who could have.
After going into the store’s back room and breaking down, Ealy resolved to see that the girl got a present that year. He asked one of his co-workers to help him find a doll, and they ended up finding three, which were delivered to her at school the next day.
Ealy was determined to listen to children’s wish lists every Christmas from that year on and try to help when he discovers there is a child in true need.
“My stomach was in knots after that,” he said. “Here I am Mr. Ho Ho Ho, and she was depending on me. She looked at me right in the eyes and said, ‘You didn’t get me anything!’ God only knows, if I really had the power that the fabled Santa has, I would make sure children like her get what they want every year.”
Ealy has not only spread joy with children through the years, but he has also brought merriment to many holiday functions. He’s been the official Santa of the Cumberland Christmas Parade for decades and fondly remembers reading Letters to Santa on the Tri-Cities’ WCPM radio station. And it all got started at the old Sears & Roebuck store in Cumberland.
“I was Santa from then on out,” Ealy said. “And I’ve loved every year of it. I’m 93 years old now, and I’m not as spry as I once was, but I still look forward to getting all dressed up and making people’s days merry and bright when it’s Christmas time.”
Ealy vividly remembers the days when Sears was a major business in the coal fields. He said both Harlan and Cumberland had catalogue stores where people would come in and place their orders. Because of Harlan County’s remote location, many depended on ordering their Christmas gifts due to the lack of big department stores.
Sears & Roebuck was founded in 1892 as a mail-order catalogue company. The American retail chain opened the first storefronts in 1925. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States, selling everything from kitchenware to automotive items. Soon, though, the company became one of the victims of the rise of specialty stores and the convenience of online shopping.
Much of the nostalgia associated with Sears centers around the catalogues that were mailed out and the catalogue stores that were opened in more rural areas like Harlan County, where customers placed their orders after flipping through the big books of merchandise displayed on a long bar with benches for comfort while thumbing through glossy pages.
Sears began marketing their stores at Christmas when the company was in its heyday with visits from Santa. A red carpet leading to a giant, sometimes elaborate chair where Sears Santas sat became a part of children’s Christmas memories for generations.
So many children flooded the Sears stores every Christmas that the company had to start hiring seasonal help just for employees to portray Santa during the holidays. Some even had to attend Santa crash courses in the bigger cities where there would be mobs of children.
Exploring the sentimental value of the Sears Christmas Wish Book catalogues is also a big part of the company’s nostalgia. Ealy was hired at the Cumberland Sears catalogue store when it opened and retired almost 20 years later when it closed.
He blames one of the company’s CEOs who got rid of the catalogues for the reason behind Sears’s slow demise.
“I feel in my heart that when they got this gentleman CEO and the first thing he did was get rid of the catalogues. That was the worst thing they could have done,” Ealy said. “People here in the mountains depended on that catalogue for their ordering. For people in cities, it might not make any difference because they have big stores nearby, but for us in the mountains, that’s how we got things. A lot of merchandise has to be brought to us.”
Ealy’s first Santa suit was provided by the company. When it started looking worn, the Tri-City Chamber of Commerce bought him a more elaborate suit because they valued his Santa portrayal to the community. That’s the suit that still hangs in Ealy’s closet today.
Although, like Ealy, it’s seen better days, the suit is always pressed and prepared for the following Christmas season.
“There would be crowds of children waiting for Santa to arrive at the old Sears store in town,” Ealy said. “It was a sight. There was a state trooper who lived up on the hill here in Benham who would drive me to the store when it was Santa time and the line of children looked like a mile long. That trooper would take me plumb down to Hiram then turn around and back to Cumberland. He would start blaring that siren, and Lord have mercy, that’s when everyone knew that Santa Claus was coming to town.”
While the crowds aren’t as big in the Tri-Cities when it’s Santa time because of the decline of the coal industry and the loss of commerce, Ealy said he was glad to see the towns of Cumberland, Benham, and Lynch doing more events, especially during the holidays, to start building more of a tourism-based economy.
One of the events he loves attending as Santa in recent years, where he is met by swarms of excitable children, is the “Have Yourself A Merry Benham Christmas” city celebration that takes place at the beginning of December.
Like years long ago at the old Sears store, Ealy greets children who line up to see him at the historic Little Benham Fire House. Ealy said it does his heart good to see measures taken to keep community spirit alive in the Tri-Cities, especially the holiday spirit.
Although he has received some criticism for portraying Santa, Ealy said he felt it was a good opportunity to teach the true meaning of Christmas.
“I’ve been told it takes away from Jesus,” Ealy said. “I feel in my heart that it doesn’t. When children start telling me what they want for Christmas and start talking about toys, I tell them that the baby Jesus is the true meaning of Christmas—our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I tell them how the wise men brought gifts to the Christ child and how Jesus is our gift of salvation. I tell them toys are fine, and it’s good to give, but we give gifts at Christmas time to remember and honor the greatest gift that was ever given to mankind—Jesus. That makes my portrayal of Santa, I believe, more meaningful and important.”
https://harlanenterprise.net/2025/12/21/at-93-ealy-still-enjoys-carrying-on-tri-cities-chrismas-tradition/
