Father Christmas: recalling the simple childhood joys he knew back in Ireland, a retired priest pours his love into new handcrafted toys for needy Gulf Coast children.

Some people call Reverend Monsignor James Hannon "Father Christmas" when the 83-year-old dons his red hat and distributes his handmade wooden toys each December. Hannon, who prefers to call himself simply "the old Santa," makes about 60 to 70 toys every year and joyfully gives them all away to underprivileged children who live in the Gulf Coast area.

"I love it. It keeps me going. It would kill me to sit and watch TV all day," the Roman Catholic priest says while sanding a small wooden truck in his garage, his gray hair and glasses speckled with sawdust. "Retiring is the best move I ever made."

Having more time to spend in woodworking, a hobby he has enjoyed for years, is one reason Harmon says he likes retirement, although he still celebrates Mass for vacationing priests most every weekend along the coast.

His garage/workshop is filled with sawdust, lumber, and finished and unfinished toys, which are painted by volunteers, including Helen Balius of Sacred Heart Parish in D'Iberville and Donna Lee Brady of St. Alphonsus Church in Ocean Springs. Rosalie Osborne of St. Elizabeth Seton Parish in Ocean Springs makes doll pillows and cradle blankets. Others help the young-at-heart priest load and distribute the toys. He has been carrying out this "toy ministry" for the past 20 years, using mostly donated wood. He especially likes to work with cedar.

Born in County Galway, Ireland, Hannon came to the United States in 1946, but he still has not lost his Irish brogue. After spending three years studying canon law at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and serving in various Catholic parishes throughout Mississippi, he retired in Ocean Springs, where he now spends many of his days turning blocks of wood into trucks, fire engines, cradles, tiny tables and chairs, and rocking horses with his Sears band saw, a table saw, and a chop (angle) saw.

Hannon's craft is one passed down to him from his father, Patrick, himself a skilled craftsman who used only primitive methods to make beautiful things out of wood. "My father was a handyman--no power tools," Hannon says. "He worked with a hammer, a chisel, and a screwdriver." A round parlor table made by Patrick Harmon, who died in 1972, stood for years in the family's thatched-roof stone house in Headford; it was the pride and joy of their family.

"She cooked the best bread you'd ever want to eat," Hannon says of his mother, Mary, who passed away in 1992. Sunday dinners for the family often consisted of a chicken cooked over an open fire in the fireplace. Hannon grew up with five siblings in the Irish countryside and has fond memories of their parish, St. Mary's, "the best church in Ireland," he says. He was baptized and celebrated his first communion and confirmation there, and he said his first Mass as a priest there.

"We had livestock and crops--potatoes, beets, wheat, barley, oats--and a pulper to grind turnips," Hannon remembers. The family killed a pig every year for food. They took their oats to a water-powered mill where it was ground. Juno, "the smartest dog you'd ever want to see," rounded up their sheep.

At Christmas, the family gathered holly with red berries front the woods and placed a lighted candle in every window. His mother knitted the wool socks they hung by the fireplace. One year, Hannon remembers finding an egg, an apple, and a packel of raisins in his stocking.

He entered the seminary on September 3, 1939, the day the British prime minister made a speech declaring war shortly after Germany invaded Poland. Ireland, however, remained neutral. Hannon recalls that the Irish prime minister, "a great man" named Eamon de Valera, kept the country out of the war, although its citizens were faced with shortages of food and supplies.

Of his seminary days during World War II at Carlow Seminary, Hannon says, "I don't know how we survived. There was no heat. We had to shave with ice water. No tea, just a powdered substitute that didn't even taste like tea."

In retirement, Hannon keeps busy with other projects besides toy-making. For the past five years, he has volunteered one day a week at a free pharmacy in Biloxi operated by the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

"I'm just the cheerleader," he says of his role greeting clients at the pharmacy, which sometimes serves as many as 80 people a day. Clients must be screened to qualify and have prescriptions from their own doctors to get medicines at this "pharmacy of the last resort," according to Hannon.

"Sometimes people must make a difficult choice--medicine or groceries," Hannon says, obviously proud of the work the society does to help the elderly and others on fixed incomes.

Last year, Harmon also put his woodworking skills to use by building several household items, including clocks, chairs, chifforobes, bookcases, and serving tables with wheels, which were auctioned off and brought in $2,500 for the pharmacy.

He has built birdhouses and bird feeders for his shady backyard, where a statue of St. Francis of Assisi keeps watch, and he exercises with his beloved dog, a collie he's had for four years.

"Louie takes me walking around the block," Hannon says as he scratches the collie's head. While they walk near his home, Hannon usually drives to the local retirement home, the Villa Maria, in his bright red pickup truck to celebrate daily Mass, and then enjoys coffee and doughnuts afterwards at the local doughnut shop.

After retiring from St. Alphonsus Church in Ocean Springs, Hannon lived for a short time at the Villa Maria before moving into his own two-bedroom, two-bath home. Though he has a kitchen, he doesn't cook, relying on friends who drop by and leave food in his refrigerator. He admits be also eats out a lot.

Though he usually distributes his toys in Ocean Springs, for the first time last year, children in Pascagoula's Live Oak Apartments were treated to the wooden toys, along with some other donated toys and dolls. When some of the children chose the inexpensive brightly colored plastic toys, volunteers encouraged them to also take a wooden toy or two compliments of "Father Christmas." For while it's nice to have the latest battery-operated game or talking doll, there is no substitute for Hannon's handcrafted treasures, which teach children and adults alike a little about appreciating life's most simple treasures.