The Story of Surfing Santa in Hermosa Beach
Shreddin’ Santa sliding through the snow at the South Bay Boardriders contest on Sunday in El Porto. (Special thanks to Tracey Meistrell, Body Gove and Dive N’ Surf) Photo [Reprinted from Easy Reader, Dec. 1978] Today, everyone knows there really is a Surfing Santa. Children all over the world have seen newspaper photographs and even television coverage of Santa surfing at the Hermosa pier at Christmas time. But it wasn’t so very long ago that many children didn’t believe in Surfing Santa. Like the Green Flash at sunset, so few children had seen Surfing Santa that most of them thought he was just a storybook figure. That’s what Easy Reader’s Littlest Reporter thought too, until one cold December day in 1978 when the waves were so big they were breaking over the bait shop at the end of the Hermosa Beach pier. Hoping to find a story about the big waves, the Littlest Reporter stopped by the Lifeguard Headquarters at the foot of the pier. The lifeguard log reported that the Baywatch boat had rescued three visiting fishermen swept off the Redondo Breakwater by the unusually large winter swell. But what really caught the Littlest Reporter’s attention wasn’t in the log. It was a…
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