Santa Claus waves to the crowd in Penn Square from the roof of the convention center.
Santa Claus greets children on stage as the tubas play after the lighting of the Christmas tree by Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray in Penn Square Friday night.
The bell choir plays prior to the lighting of the Christmas tree in downtown Lancaster Friday night.
The holidays are a time for tradition.
A Christmas tradition for downtown Lancaster was revived Friday when Santa Claus returned to the roof of the former Watt & Shand department store for the first time in 14 years.
Between 3,000 and 4,000 people watched as Santa appeared above the store façade and descended to Penn Square on a city Fire Bureau ladder truck.
VIDEO: Santa Claus arrives and helps light Lancaster's Christmas tree
"Oh yeah, this is bringing back old memories," said Hank Lawrence, 68, of Mountville.
Lawrence remembers when his parents would bring him to Penn Square nearly 60 years ago to see Santa's annual arrival.
"That's when downtown was downtown," Lawrence said, recalling the department store's decorated window displays.
Those windows were crowded Friday night with people having dinner and drinks in the Rendezvous Lounge and in the lobby of the Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square hotel, which opened in June.
Josh Nowak, the marketing director of the 300-room hotel and the attached Lancaster County Convention Center, said the hotel management has been inundated with requests to have Santa return.
"Hundreds of people came to us and asked if we would revive the tradition," Nowak said. "We were delighted to be a part of it."
Santa's arrival was orchestrated by the city Mayor's Office of Special Events.
MOOSE director Jennifer Baker said she also had received a lot of requests for Santa to return to haunts atop the Watt & Shand.
One woman called from Philadelphia early Friday to see if it was true that Santa would again be on the building, Baker said. She wanted to know if it was worth the drive.
Baker was with St. Nick when he arrived on the rooftop. Four stories above the street in freezing wind, she looked down on the crowd as the bells rang and the spotlight shone on Santa.
"I just heard the whole crowd of 3,000 or 4,000 people gasp," she said.
Word had been released that Santa would be there, but just how he would arrive had been kept under wraps.
The traditional way, done from at least the mid-1940s until The Bon-Ton closed the store in 1995, was for Santa to arrive by convertible, then climb a Fire Bureau ladder to the roof.
William Bair, a retired fire chief for Armstrong World Industries, said it was always a city firefighter dressed as Santa who climbed to the roof. The department store's Santa would then take his place in the large chair in the toy department on the store's third floor about 15 minutes later.
"That gave them time to get their Santa Claus set up and the fireman's Santa to disappear. The kids didn't know the difference," Bair recalled.
Shortly after Santa arrived and joined Mayor Rick Gray on the stage, a city firefighter slipped and fell about 8 feet from atop the ladder truck to the street. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
The identity of the firefighter was not released, and no information on his condition was released at the scene.
Friday's festivities began at about 6:30 p.m. with a performance by the Wesley Handbell Choir from First United Methodist Church. After the lighting of the city tree came Tuba Christmas, a band of tuba players playing holiday favorites.
Coming almost as far as Santa's ride from the North Pole, Stephan Gaengel, of Frankfurt, Germany, arrived in Lancaster on Friday. Wearing a traditional Santa suit he had brought with him, Gaengel was joined by 14 other Santas, including Werner Nachtigal, of Berlin, and Karen Zelfimyan, of Odessa, Ukraine.
They were among 1,800 Santas visiting Christmas celebrations in Europe and the U.S. as part of a Church of the Word International initiative, said Gaengel, who will be in Philadelphia tonight.
"We found that people forget what Christmas is all about," Gaengel said. "They thought that it was about the birthday of Santa Claus."
The gaggle of Santas was joined by members of the local Church of the Word International congregation on Olde Homestead Lane, who said they wanted to remind people of the true meaning of Christmas.
At the end of Friday's ceremony, the Santa who came down from the Watt & Shand roof took up residence in a gingerbread house in Binns Park. He'll be there from 6 to 9 p.m. Fridays and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays through Dec. 20.