A real-life Santa decked out his home in 3,000 glittering Christmas lights to fulfil his wife’s dying wish - and sends letters to all the children who write to him. David Brown, 63, was widowed in August when his wife Ann died days before her 69th birthday. But before her death, Ann asked David to pull out all the stops for a tradition which began 11 years earlier, when she first became ill. To please his wife when she first became bedridden with COPD, a progressive lung disease, David decorated their home in Bonnyrigg, Edinburgh, with Christmas lights.