For 26 years, a man in Kansas City walked up to complete strangers and handed them $100 bills. He wished them a merry Christmas, then walked away.
He turned up in coin laundries, thrift stores, barbershops and diners. In a single Christmas season, he could hand out thousands of dollars.
People shouted with joy. Some cried and thanked him again and again. By then, he was already heading for the door.
Reporters were sometimes allowed to tag along, but only if they promised never to reveal who he was. They kept that promise. It was the reporters who gave him the only name the city knew him by: Secret Santa.
Nobody knew where his money came from. Nobody knew why a man would give so much away and refuse to take any credit for it, year after year.
The answer lay half a lifetime back, in a small town in Mississippi.