November 20, 2025

Meet and Greet Brunch With Santa

Santa’s coming to town! Don’t miss a chance to meet with Santa on Dec. 14 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lion Hills Center and Golf Course in Columbus.

Children can share their Christmas wish lists with Santa and parents are welcome to take photos.

The event is expected sell out and reservations are highly recommended. There will be a buffet with children-themed food, including pancakes, bacon, and a hot-chocolate bar.

The cost is $25 for adults and $15 for children ages 10 and younger, plus tax and gratuity. Reserve a spot at 662.328.4837. Payment must be made in advance to reserve as spot.

Learn more about Santa below.

Santa is a frequent visitor to a cluster of small Mississippi towns located in the northeastern part of the state close to the Alabama border.

During the holiday season he is often spotted cruising the streets of Amory in a red 1954 two-ton truck that is well known to parade goers in Mantachie and Hatley.

Santa is a regular visitor to several schools in the area and each year prior to Christmas he hand-delivers 600 poinsettias to residents of nine nursing homes and long-term care facilities: four in Fulton, three in Amory, and two in Aberdeen.

Santa is a man who, at least in this rural part of the Magnolia State, is also known as Tony Dill. A lifelong resident of the community near Amory known locally as Mt. Zion, Dill, 68, was a man in search of something meaningful to fill a void brought on by an accident eight years ago that sidelined his career as a carpenter and facilities maintenance worker.

When an extension ladder he was working on slipped out from under him, Dill suffered major injuries that resulted in a hip replacement and shoulder surgery.

“The doctor did a magnificent job on my shoulder but the nerve block killed the feeling in six of my fingers,” he said. “Instead of doing everything by feel, I have to tell my fingers to bend.”

Dill, who was accustomed to working 12 to 16 hours a day, had never owned a recliner, but he purchased one. Prescribed pain medications made him want to sit and sleep all day. He ditched the medicines and decided to “just deal with it.”

“I asked the good Lord to get me out of that recliner and give me something with a purpose,” Dill said.

It started innocuously enough with the purchase of an old Santa suit he used that Christmas to stand outside Southern Crossing Outfitters in Amory, a clothing store owned by his daughter.

“I would stand out there and wave,” Dill said. “A lady pulled up one day and said, ‘Santa, will you do me a favor? What would you charge to come out to a nursing home? Our Santa Claus got sick.’ I told her, ‘I’m not charging anything, but I would be happy to come out.’ I had the time of my life.”

And so, it began.

About that time, officials at his church asked Dill if he could grow a beard for a part in a biblical play about Noah and the ark described in the book of Genesis.

“I have never been able to grow a beard, but I told them I would try,” Dill said. “It did grow. It grew unreal. If I only cut it every two weeks like it should be done, it would be down to my belt in no time.”

He was growing into his role as Santa.

These days, the weeks leading to the holidays are a whirlwind for Dill that reaches a crescendo in December. He is a regular at Christmas events where he sits for pictures with children. Dill has even posed with pets during events hosted by the Amory Humane Society, which went kind of sideways once when a man with a chihuahua thrust the dog in between two shar-peis sitting on Dill’s lap for a photo.

“Lord have mercy, fur was flying everywhere, including some of mine,” Dill said with a laugh. “That chihuahua went nuts.”

Dill doesn’t charge for his work as Santa, but he will accept donations, which usually come in the form of small bills. He will occasionally get $100 and once a man from Pennsylvania sent him $500.

Any money Dill does get pays for his Christmas projects. The poinsettias he purchases for nursing home residents cost a little shy of $4,000, which Dill and a group of friends pay for each year. He also purchases clothes, shoes and other items for children when he can. 

The poinsettias first came about during COVID when Dill could not enter the nursing homes. He asked for permission to purchase the poinsettias and have them distributed by staff to patients in the long-term care facilities.

“I told them I want every resident to have a poinsettia,” Dill said. “I don’t care if the resident knows they are in the world or not, I want them to have one. I know for some of the nursing homes, that was the only Christmas decorations they got that year.”

Dill and his wife, Felicia, also decorate more than an acre of their property each year and open it up to the public. There is a covered bridge he constructed with help from his son-in-law that spans a creek on his property that is strung with Christmas lights and is a favored location for those taking family photos.

Over the years, he has had more than 60 artificial trees donated, all of which are decorated. Some are scattered around the property, while others are located inside a silo filled with Christmas-themed displays. There is also a large, decorated storage unit.

He has two nativity scenes and about eight other Christmas displays, one of which includes a train he constructed from a rain barrel. Dill uses a snow machine to blanket the property when weather permits. He purchased and repaired two sleighs that were hand-crafted by an Amish community in Lancaster, PA, with one dating back to 1904.

Dill announces on his Facebook page when the displays are open to the public.

“I tell them to share it and, believe me, they share,” Dill said. “We have people come here from all over. There will be some nights when I won’t know but a couple of families out of everybody here.

“I’ll give away hot chocolate at least twice, sometimes three times a year. I’ll usually give away about 400 cups and we don’t make that chocolate you mix with water. My wife makes real hot chocolate with milk. We don’t charge anything, just donations. If we don’t get a penny, that’s fine.”

Dill has accumulated many stories, many of them comical.

During the COVID pandemic, he would load a sleigh into the back of his pickup and park it at the Piggly Wiggly in Amory that was later destroyed by a tornado. Parents would bring their children to stand at the foot of the truck to have their picture made with Santa. A young girl and her brother were among the visitors on one occasion.

“The little girl looked at her brother, shook her finger at him and said, ‘I told you Santa wasn’t dead. There he is right there. I want you to go get yourself a good look at him.’

“Another time, this little boy told me, ‘I’ll tell you what I want but don’t you bring my daddy anything. He cusses all the time.’ That man’s wife was bent over double laughing and the man was just shaking his head. It was the funniest thing in the world.”

Being Santa isn’t always easy though.

One Christmas Dill was asked to visit an elderly woman in a nursing home who was only expected to live a few more hours. Her family was there and they asked Dill to sit with her.

“She went to smiling and kissed my hand,” Dill said.

At the family’s request, he stayed until she passed away.

He went to the home of a young boy with Huntington’s Disease, a fatal inherited illness that causes nerve cells in the brain to decay over time. On another occasion, he was asked to visit through Facetime with a Baton Rouge, LA, boy of 3 who was terminally ill.

“His parents called me and the boy was sitting on a couch,” Dill said, is voice raw with emotion. “When he saw me, that little boy started laughing and cutting up. He was just beside himself.”

Dill learned the boy died two weeks later.

“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “The hardest things to do as Santa are the most rewarding. It doesn’t make much sense, but to give somebody a little happiness at the end is one of the things that keeps me going.”

He also does Christmas in July events where he gives away multi-colored pinwheels to residents in nursing homes. Some stick them in the vents of their window air conditioning units, while others use them to adorn their wheelchairs.

At Easter, he and his wife create a resurrection nativity scene that is open to the public.

“I buy a (live) lamb for Easter and then I give it back to them once it is over,” Dill said.

Dill said he’s learned a few things since he first asked for a purpose to his life.

“If you ask the good Lord for something, you might end up being something you never thought you would be,” Dill said. “But see, I always thought a fellow who had long hair was a hippie. That's the way my parents saw it, you know? Now, I've got pretty long hair, but I’m happier than I have ever been, so I’ll just take it.”