Anyone who's spent a Christmas in McLean knows Keith Shively. Sometime between Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas morning, everyone in McLean and for a few miles beyond has heard the clanging sirens of an antique fire truck escorted by several police cars roaring by their house.

For almost 20 years, the burly, bellowing, waving, candy-flinging Santa Claus perched on top of that truck has been Shively.

“It's the most amazing thing I've ever done,” Shively, 56, said last week in his Pimmit Hills home, laboring to get his words out around his oxygen tube.

He has advanced gastric cancer, has been given only days to live and talking hurts him. Still, he wants to talk about being Santa Claus.

“I remember once, I had one little girl run up to me; she crawled right into my lap, put her head on my shoulder and fell asleep. ... I loved that,” Shively said.

“Every time Keith gets up on the truck, even when we're in the parking lot of the fire station and there's nobody around anywhere, his hand starts automatically waving. I don't know how he holds it up there for so long,” McLean firefighter Mike Paris said.

Shively, who worked for the Fairfax County Park Authority for more than 30 years, first started playing Santa Claus in the late 1980s for the children of neighbors and friends.

“He was a husky guy,” recalls his brother, Gary Shively.

Keith Shively was instantly addicted to being Santa and played the part whenever he could.

“I have this natural way with children, they follow me anywhere,” Shively said.

When the McLean Volunteer Fire Department needed someone to play Santa in local neighborhoods, they called Keith Shively. In 1989 they started putting him on the back of a 1971 fire truck and driving him everywhere, and a McLean Christmas tradition was born. Paris drives the truck every year and, as they zoomed around McLean dispensing candy canes and “Ho, ho, ho's,” he and Shively always made a few stops.

“There's been times where we'd pull up to a house, and we'd see a kid in a wheelchair, and I'd turn around to ask Keith if he wanted to stop, and he'd already be climbing off the truck,” Paris said.

Shively has been battling gastric cancer for around 10 years and has gone through chemotherapy several times. Finally, last Christmas, he was too sick to ride the truck or even to watch it go by. Visibly shrunken and sometimes too weak to speak, he still finds the energy to be passionate about Santa Claus. He has even requested that his body be cremated in his Santa suit.

“If anybody out there ever had the inclination to play Santa, don't let anything stop you” said Shively.

“Don't rush the kids when you talk to them. Sometimes they're real shy. You have to let them talk at their own speed, that's the secret,” he added.