Secret identity of Secret Santa revealed

The morning newspaper just cannot let well enough alone. No, today, they had to gush and cream all over themselves about how their inspirational yarn about the "Secret Santa" who handed out $100 bills all over town this week has made the national news -- the third time this has happened to the Eagle in the history of modern civilization, following the accounts of a sad soldier deploying to the Middle East and some lady faking a fall into a Berkshire Mall fountain.

Today, however, the Page One photo delivered a tell-all clue into the identity of the faux Kris Kringle, a match-up that cannot be mere chance.

Secret Santa...is...is... the ghost of Richie Ashburn, the voice of the Philadelphia Phillies through great years and lean.

The cap is the dead giveaway.

Why is Whitey walking the Earth to give away crisp C-notes to those in financial turmoil?

Because he can, bubba.

Who'd you think this Secret Santa dude was anyway?

Andy Reid?

He's chubby like the big guy, all right, but Andy's got his own gift he's giving to Philadelphia, week after week, until it all ends after Christmas.

Secret Santa swings by for photo-op at Reading's poverty row

A businessman fellow who goes by Secret Santa visited Reading yesterday to hand out good cheer in the form of $100 bills to the city's starving, out-of-work citizens. Secret Santa's visit was so clandestine that the morning newspaper was only able to capture and post five brilliantly composed photos of Secret Santa, mingling about in red cap and sweatshirt, dispensing largess to the luckless local folks living in misery.

Secret Santa visited such as magnets for the impoverished as the Salvation Army, the BARTA bus terminal,  the Naber-Hood Laundromat at Eighth and Chestnut streets, the Queen City Diner, a Goodwill Retail Store, and the Wine and Spirits Shoppe on Penn Street.

Mitt Romney: "Look, I have a $100 bill, too. But you can't have it."While those who received a crisp C-note left feeling blessed with holiday cheer, reaction by the GOP field was swift and harsh:

Mitt Romney: "Giving people on the street a hundred dollars does nothing to create jobs. Secret Santa should give the money to the people who run the Nabor-Hood Laundromat and the Queen city. That will put people back to work."

Newt Gingrich: "Handing out $100 bills to strangers is socialism, plain and simple."

Rick Perry: "How are people going to feel if they get $100 now and then wake up on December 29 to find less under the Christmas tree?"

Michele Bachmann: "Maybe if Obama repealed the regulations on sleigh emissions, Secret Santa wouldn't move his workshops to the North Pole."

Rick Santorum: "This is only a slippery slope to man-on-reindeer sex."