LONDON — As an adult, Owen Williams had long stopped believing in Santa Claus. But this week he amused Twitter with the tale of a secret Santa in Wales: a neighbor who left Mr. Williams’s young daughter 14 years of Christmas gifts.The neighbor, Ken Watson, was a widower who had become fond of Mr. Williams’s 2½-year-old daughter, Cadi. He died recently in his 80s.It’s not clear why Mr. Watson chose to give Cadi 14 years’ worth of Christmas presents. Mr. Watson had two children of his own but no grandchildren, and he showed grandfatherly love to the children of his neighborhood in Barry, in southern Wales, i+ by spoiling them with gifts.On Monday, Mr. Williams opened the door to his home in Barry to find his neighbor’s daughter standing there with a sack filled with colorfully wrapped presents that Mr. Watson had bought for Cadi.“He always told us he’d live till he was 100 years old,” Mr. Williams wrote on Twitter, “so these gifts would have taken him up to our little girl’s 16th Christmas.”After the initial shock, Mr. Williams and his wife, Caroline, were faced with a conundrum: Should they open all the presents right away and rewrap them to be given out in age-appropriate order, or should they give their daughter one randomly picked gift from Mr. Watson each Christmas?The couple turned to Twitter to settle the question, garnering 67,022 votes in a poll.The verdict: The Williamses should leave the presents as they are, and dip into the offerings once a year until Cadi is 16.Mr. Williams revealed they have already opened a first gift. They couldn't resist. Cadi received “Christmas Eve at the Mellops,’” a children’s book by Tomi Ungerer, wrapped in purple and blue paper.Cadi is still in the dark about it all. “She’s too young to understand,” said her father, who acknowledged in a Twitter exchange on Wednesday that he was overwhelmed by the media attention his story had received. More than 39,000 Twitter users had “liked” Mr. Williams’s initial tweet by Wednesday, but several people said they were, frankly, bewildered by Mr. Watson’s generosity.
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| Candi and some of the presents she will receive |
