For every child, there is a time to believe in Santa. For Billy Redford, that time hasn't yet ended.

Billy Redford, age 10, loved Christmas and still believed in Santa Claus, but he didn't trust him totally. Since he was 6, he realized Santa's fortunes always seemed to parallel his family's. If the Redfords had a bad year, it turned out that Santa was having a hard time, too, and couldn't bring much in the way of presents.

Believing this, when he was 7 years old, Billy had even written a serious letter to Santa, commiserating about the drought. His parents had laughed about it for an hour.

"Dear Sandy Claws," Billy had written. "I know times are tuff. I hope you made better crops up there at the North Pol than us. If you could bring me a BB gun or a Nintendo game, I would be oblijed. Your frend, Billy Redford."

To which, he had added a careful P.S. "My sister wants a Barby Doll but is to littel to rite to you. She has ben mostly good."

As luck would have it, that year Santa had apparently done no better than the Redfords, and his gifts were practical--new shoes, warm clothes and a pair of shiny, new lunchboxes for school. Billy understood this and felt bad for Sandy Claws who had so many children to see to. He wrote a polite letter of thanks to the old man, as he had been taught to do. "The cloths fit good," he said, "and meny thanks for the other stuff."

On a practical note, he added: "Next year, if you do good, I would just as soon have a 22 as the BB gun if it is all the same to you."

The next year, at the age of 8, Billy Redford wrote a more business-like letter to Santa in keeping with his maturity:

"Dear Santy Claws,
Our corn and hay did good, and Daddy says there is hope for beef yet. If you did good to, could you bring me a four-ten shotgun instid of the 22? I could kill mise and rats at the siloh, and dad wood pay 2 sents each. So plaes bring one."

This followed by another P.S.: "My frend Joey Larkin says you are made up and not real. Ha Ha. What a goofy kid. I said if he aint real I wood get all my letters back you dummy. Don't get mad at Joey, tho he is my best frend."

Now, Alice and Ben Redford, throughout all these letters, (the first ones in crayon) had faithfully done their part to let their children believe in the saintly old man who looked after children at Christmas.

Alice always read Billy's letters to Ben, and she and her husband laughed aloud but always put on a stamp and mailed the homemade envelopes to SANTY CLAWS, THE NORTH POLE, EARTH. They supposed the post office had some way to deal with these things.

"He'll quit believing when it's time for him to," said Ben Redford. "A kid ought to have some wishing space before reality sets in."

Reality, however, didn't seem to be a problem for Billy Redford, except for Christmas. At age 6 he had laughed off the tooth fairy; he decided when he was 7 that the Easter Bunny was pretty silly, and he knew by the time he was 8 that Halloween was just a great time to dress up and pretend.

But his belief in Santa Claus, at 9, stayed unshakeable. It seemed to his parents that to Billy, the idea of an old man who liked giving presents was too good not to be true, and neither of them wanted to tamper with his faith.

It was in November of the year 2000 that Billy, now 10 years old, mailed his final letter to Santa Claus, dropping it hastily on the mail table in the hall before he dashed off to meet the school bus, his small sister in tow.

Alice brought it into the warm kitchen after the children were gone and opened it to share with her husband.

Billy's yearly letters to Santa Claus were now a funny and touching ritual that, among other things, made them glad they had married. This time though, it gave her a strange feeling to heft the thickness of the envelope and see the neat printing on it. Their son was growing up.

To their astonishment, 30 $1 bills spilled out when she opened it.

"Dear Santa," the letter began. "This will be the last time I write to you because I know I am too old to ask for things. My folks give me stuff now, and you don't have to worry. Thank you very much for all the stuff you gave me when I was little, even when times were bad. I hope you will keep giving my sister stuff even when she is onery and snotty. Enclosed is money I saved up to pay you back for hard times when there wasn't enough to go around. You are a great mythalogicul person who cares about kids.
Your friend, William (Billy) Redford
P.S. Don't give up on Joey, he's still just a little Scroogy."

Alice, reading aloud, stopped to look at her husband who looked a little moist around the eyes.

"I knew you were a great mythological person," she said, "and now I think maybe I might be one too."

"Well," said Ben Redford, blowing his nose, "at Christmas time, it beats being Scroogy.