Before Santa queued for selfies and brand deals, before red became the corporate hex code for December, there was a shopkeeper in Brockton, Massachusetts, who looked at winter and decided it needed a face. His name was James Edgar—immigrant, entrepreneur, enthusiastic believer in the theatre of kindness.

In 1890, he had a tailor sew a suit the color of cherries and warmth. He tested boots, found some that made noise in the right way, practiced the ho-ho-ho until it felt like breath instead of acting. And then he did something gently revolutionary: he put it on in public.

He didn’t print flyers. He didn’t schedule a launch. He simply stepped onto his shop floor in a fur-trimmed idea. A boy pointed. A girl’s mouth dropped into perfect O. An old man took off his hat. The town’s ledger of ordinary tipped, just a little, toward wonder.

Word spread the way joy always does—through mouths that can’t keep it. Children came by train from neighboring cities, cheeks apple-bright in the cold, holding letters with handwriting that wobbled like first skating. James didn’t sell them anything. He listened. He asked for names and used them like presents. He handed out oranges and little sweets. He gave jobs to parents who needed shifts. He sent parcels to addresses that hadn’t paid yet because grace is also inventory management.

A reporter asked why he did it. He said, “Because I remember being small and invisible. I have a chance to fix that for one month of the year.” The next December, he did it again. And again. Others copied him—competitors, then cities, then an entire culture that discovered children will queue for the chance to be seen.

James could have trademarked it. He could have sold Santa franchises and retired rich in a warm climate under a tree that wasn’t seasonal. Instead, he stayed in Brockton, kept the suit on a peg behind the counter, and measured success by the volume of laughter in the shop.

People debate origins. Was Santa red because of a soda ad? Because bishops wore crimson? Because winter looks better warmed? The children of Brockton knew: he was red because a man decided love should be unmistakable on a crowded street.

When James died, the town lined the route with evergreen and mittens, a guard of honor made from everything he’d dignified. Men who hated ceremony cried. A boy who had once sat on his lap held his own son and whispered, “He looked at me like I existed.” That memory is an heirloom.

Every December, thousands of Santas take up the role like a baton. Some are perfect; some are poorly hemmed. All inherit a single instruction from a dry-goods store in 1890: don’t sell; see. In shop windows and hospital corridors, on parade floats and tiny school stages, they repeat his thesis: there is power in dressing the part you plan to play in someone else’s joy.

We talk about the magic of Christmas as if it were weather. James Edgar demonstrated it is choreography. Someone steps forward, wears kindness loudly, and the room changes shape.

And somewhere, a peg behind a counter is still warm.