Off Route 7 just north of Simpaug Turnpike, there’s a road called Ashbee Lane, named after Charley Ashbee. A fan of its namesake, developer Everett Lounsbury knew Ashbee by his real name, but many people didn’t.
To them, he was just Santa Claus.
Born in New York City in 1872, Charles Francis Ashbee was a retired insurance executive when he moved to Ridgefield around 1930. Soon after, he was asked to fill in for someone unable to play Santa at a church school’s Christmas party.
Ashbee was such a hit that by the mid-1930s, he was a fixture at dozens of Christmas celebrations and well on his way to becoming a local legend. Ridgefield Savings Bank (now Fairfield County Bank) on Main Street had Charley visit each year. So did Ridgefield Hardware, where he’d often arrive in a horse-drawn sleigh. (In 1945, Ashbee kept his feet warm with a pair of German paratrooper boots, brought back from the just-ended war by store owner Ed Rabin’s brother, Sidney.)
Over three decades of making at least 20 appearances each season, “Uncle Charley” wore out three Santa suits and six sets of wigs and whiskers.
“Charley got to be such an important part of the Christmas season that letters addressed to Santa at the North Pole were rerouted to him,” says former Ridgefield postmaster, Dick Venus. “He would never fail to visit the home of the little kid who wrote the letter.”
Venus added that, for many struggling families, “Ashbee was able to locate a toy that a youngster had asked for. When he did, he would take it along with him and leave it with the parents to be put under the tree. Not only the kids, but grownups as well, thought that he was just the greatest.”
Ashbee loved to chat with the kids who climbed onto his lap. When he’d ask what they wanted for Christmas, however, their answers could be challenging. Around 1956, a little girl replied: “A big doll, half the size of me, that talks and walks and winks real lashes. My little brother says he should get a bright red bike. And this morning, in the kitchen, mama was real excited and said she deserves a new husband. Can we get all these things, please, Santa?”
To the same question, a boy once answered: “Well, you ought to know by now what I want — I gave you a list this morning up in Danbury.”
For all the joy he gave children, Ashbee was named Rotary’s Ridgefield Citizen of the Year in 1960. A year later, when he was about 88, he missed his first Christmas as Santa in over 35 years. He was seriously ill and confined to a nursing home. Scores of the town’s children then turned the tables and visited him that Christmas season; some knew he had been Santa in the past, while to others, he was just a nice old man who needed cheering up.
Uncle Charley passed away the following spring of 1962, but the memory of what he added to
Ridgefield’s Christmas spirit for so
many years lives on. •
