He’ll be five floors lower than his last visit, but Santa will return to The Valley today — the first time in 23 years.

Beginning just after World War I and continuing until the downtown department store closed its doors in 1986, Santa Claus’ arrival and days in Toyland at The Valley created a Vicksburg tradition.

If you go

Santa Claus will be at The Valley from 1 until 5 this afternoon, accessible through a new doorway facing Walnut Street. Santa’s visit is part of downtown’s Old Fashioned Christmas Open House. Photos with Santa will be taken for $5 each, and prints will be available about 30 minutes later next to Duff’s Tavern and Grille at 1300 Washington St., where poinsettias will be given to downtown shoppers who spend $25 or more. The Valley operations director Tracye Prewitt said the visits are open to children of all ages.

“The Valley was the place to go at Christmas before shopping malls,” said Martin Pace, one of thousands of children who sat on Santa’s lap and today sheriff of Warren County. “The significant event of the coming of the season was The Valley’s opening of Toyland.”

Barbara Tolliver recalls walking about three miles from her family home on East Main Street to see Santa.

“It was a big event in our family. Mother dressed us up,” she said. “We always told Santa what we wanted for Christmas, and surprisingly, we always got just what we asked for.”

Today, the 59-year-old director of the United Way of West Central Mississippi remembers asking Santa for a set of dishes so she could be like her mother and a pair of black boots that she wore despite their being too small. “I didn’t want to return them,” she said, so she never told her mother.

The Valley, an icon of downtown in its day, sat vacant at its home on Washington and South streets until reopening this summer as a luxury condominium complex.

In Santa’s early days at The Valley, when the department store was the largest from New Orleans to Memphis, he arrived on a fire truck, former owner Louis Leyens said in a phone call from Connecticut.

In later years, Santa’s arrival corresponded with his first appearance in Vicksburg, during the annual Christmas parade through downtown.

Inside the stores, aisles of ornaments, toys and poinsettias led to Santa and the peppermint sticks he passed out.

Today, Santa will be escorted into place by Warren County deputies with sirens blaring.

Santa “Sandy” Carpenter, 53, is the executive assistant for the Warren County Board of Supervisors. She, too, well remembers visiting the other Santa at The Valley, asking for dolls and accessories.

At first, she said, she was afraid of the big guy in the red suit. “But, then you wanted to go back every Saturday,” she said.

Retired Waterways Experiment Station employee Ethel Pickens remembers eagerly waiting on the elevator ride to the fifth floor.

“As soon as you got off, Santa was sitting right there,” she said. “He was real then.”

Pickens, 74, said the feelings she had when she saw him would not let her believe he wasn’t.

“I truly think of The Valley when I think of Christmas,” she said.

Ella Mae Logue, 89, and Juanita Childers, 78, worked at the store for decades, and both said they looked forward to going to work.

“It was great. Each floor would bring a dish to put in a little room on the first floor,” said Childers. “We’d snack throughout the day.”

Logue said she loved having Santa and the children, along with Christmas trimmings in the windows.

“We had Christmas trees all through The Valley. Everybody decorated,” she said. “When you weren’t working, you could hang ornaments.”

Laurence Leyens, the son of Louis Leyens and former mayor of Vicksburg, said he will take his 2-year-old son, Louis Corey Leyens, to see Santa this afternoon.

“He’s the sixth generation in the family,” Laurence Leyens said.

The Leyens family owned the store and its property from 1881 until last year.

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Contact Tish Butts at tbutts@vicksburgpost.com