Boy Sits On Santa’s Lap, Realizes 13 Years Later It’s His Father-In-Law
When Chris Burd was 13-years-old he went to the mall in Maplewood, Minn during Christmas time. He was with his three-year-old sister, and to appease her he also sat on the lap of the mall's Santa Claus and asked for gifts.
Fast forward 13 years. Chris had recently become engaged when he got a call from his mother who tells him she had made an interesting discovery while going through a batch of old pictures.
"My mom was going through old photos and said she thinks one of my old Santa pictures was me sitting on my fiancé's dad's lap," Chris told ABCNews.com. "And I just told her she's nuts. So later in the week I went over to the house and saw it and decided it wasn't him. But later on, I took a closer look and was like, 'Oh my God. That's Liz's dad."
Liz's dad, Elmer Abbas, sports the white beard of Kris Kringle all year. He's been playing Santa at functions for two decades, but his chance encounter with Chris was the only year he went the mall Santa route.
Although Chris classified the discovery as a bit "creepy," that didn't stop Chris and Liz from having fun with it during their wedding, where photos of both of them sitting on Elmer's Santa Claus lap were displayed prominently.
As for the gift Chris asked for on that fateful day? Elmer likes to tell people the forward-thinking youngster requested "a beautiful wife."