Being Santa Claus : What I Learned About the True Meaning of Christmas (9781101600528) (14 page)

In the morning, the family would come downstairs, the kids would be scrambling for the presents under the tree, and suddenly Mom or Dad would say, “Hey, this videotape has something on it! It’s at the end of the tape, but I know I put a blank tape in there.” The family would then rewind the tape to see what was on it, and—lo and behold—they caught Santa Claus coming out of the fireplace, eating some cookies and milk, putting presents under their tree, and then disappearing.

Some parents later told me that their children took the tapes into school for show-and-tell. I can only imagine the reactions in those classrooms.

Santa Cam visits allowed me to visit many more children than if I’d worked only on Christmas Eve. Nearly two dozen families received Santa Cam visits that year, and I still got to interact with hundreds of others at the mall in the North Pole Village. My solution may not have been perfect, but it still made for a very Merry Christmas for them—and a whole lot less stress for Santa!

THE FUNNY THING ABOUT TRYING TO MAKE
Christmas perfect for our kids, I’ve come to realize, is that that’s not what really matters to them. Sure, they want toys and stockings stuffed with goodies, but what they really, truly want is that magical Christmas feeling. And love is the biggest component. As long as
love is there, the Christmas spirit comes through. I’ve seen families work extra-long hours to make the holiday special for their children, but often they tell me that the most priceless moments they have are seeing their children’s faces when they meet Santa. It’s the sharing of these treasured moments that makes Christmas special.

I’m not one to give advice, but if I were, I would say to parents: slow down and take a breath. Put aside the high-pressure sales, the search for the biggest and best tree, and the mythical idea of what a “perfect Christmas” looks like. And simply spend time together as a family, enjoying the Christmas spirit in the air. It’s free, you know! Sit down and watch some of the classic or funny Christmas movies on television together, or take a walk down a city street lit up with twinkling lights and stroll past the festive store windows. As I learned from the invention of the Santa Cam, children don’t need “perfect” to have a Merry Christmas. There are a million different ways to give them the wonder of the holiday without running yourself ragged. And if you don’t get it exactly perfect…well, children appreciate our best efforts more than we might think.

Take it from Santa: the simple, special moments of togetherness are what create the most lasting Christmas memories.

A
S MUCH AS I WISH THAT LIFE AS A PROFESSIONAL
Santa Claus was always filled with smiles and sparkles, that’s not necessarily the case. One of the things that happens is that I—along with other Santas I know—take a lot of flak about the commercialization of Christmas.

There are folks who feel that Christmas has become nothing more than an excuse for retailers to whip shoppers into a frenzy in order to make more money. They look around at the fancy decorations, the 5:00
A.M
. sale madness, and other holiday trappings and despair that the spirit of Christmas has gotten lost amid all the “stuff.” Some even get angry that the holiday festivities start as early as the first week of November, and I suppose Santa is a relatively easy target. I’ve actually had
people walk up to me while I was doing an appearance at a shopping center and say, “Shame on you for being at the mall before Thanksgiving!”

But from my perspective, people are looking at this in the wrong way. They see Santa’s November appearances as nothing more than retailers looking to rush the season to make more money. I can’t speak for all Santas, but as for me, I see myself being out there simply to get people into the spirit of Christmas. When is it ever too soon to feel joyful?

It saddens me that people believe that Santa or Christmas have become somehow tainted. From my perspective, when people say Christmas is too commercialized, it’s because they, in their hearts, have allowed it to become that way. We all have to define things for ourselves. It took a shaking of my own faith for me to learn that it’s up to each one of us to decide what Christmas is truly all about.

THE YEAR 2007 WAS NOT A GREAT ONE FOR
Santa Claus.

The cultural feeling toward Christmas and Santa had begun shifting. A growing number of news articles that year reported how big chain stores were no longer allowing their greeters to say “Merry Christmas,” replacing it with the more politically correct “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings.” And then, shortly after
Thanksgiving, the acting surgeon general of the United States made the following comment to the
Boston Herald
: “It is really important that the people who kids look up to as role models are in good shape, eating well and getting exercise…Santa is no different.”

Reporters and radio hosts quickly found my website and flooded me with calls and requests for my reaction. “How does it make you feel knowing that the surgeon general thinks Santa Claus is a bad role model for children?” they asked. “Do you think the United States has declared war on Christmas?”

I always provided them with honest answers. During most interviews, I would say, “In all my years playing Santa Claus, I’ve had a lot of children sit on my lap and tell me what they want to be when they grow up. I’ve heard fireman, astronaut, ballerina, baseball player, rock star, doctor, comic book artist, video game maker, and even president of the United States. But no child has ever told me, ‘I want to be you, Santa.’ I think they realize that there’s only one Santa Claus. So I can’t imagine that children want to be fat just so they can be more like Santa.”

As I did more and more interviews, I found out that public controversies surrounding Santa Claus extended beyond just the United States. The Australian government had recently discouraged their Santas from saying “Ho, ho, ho!” because the word “ho” had developed a negative slang meaning. The government urged their
Australian Santas to say “Ha, ha, ha!” instead. I kid you not.

In merry old England, concerns about pedophilia had led Rotary Clubs throughout the United Kingdom to bar children from sitting on Santa’s lap. The citizens of Great Britain now had to take photos of their children sitting
next to
Santa Claus.

Unbelievable! Preposterous! When did Santa Claus become an international villain?

I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked. There had also been rumblings of yuletide unhappiness the prior season in 2006 when, for the first time as Santa, I found myself faced with a few unpleasant experiences. The first was being told by a mall’s corporate representative that if I wanted to return as their Santa-in-residence that year, I would have to do it exclusively—meaning that I couldn’t appear in families’ homes. But I already had more than a dozen appearances scheduled. Many of my regular customers had booked me well in advance to do personal appearances, and my pajama visits had gone so well that several others had reserved me specifically for Christmas Eve.

When I explained to this representative that I wouldn’t be able to agree to exclusivity, she replied rather nastily, “Mr. Lizard, these are the terms. You are free to take them or leave them. Frankly, we can dress up any person with a white beard as Santa Claus, and people will still come to see him.”

That statement shocked me speechless. I thought of all the little things I’d done to make my appearances as Santa extra special: singing songs with people while they waited in line, getting out of my chair and changing location to help the children who were afraid of Santa, the research I did on the latest toys, all the ways that I’d answer tough questions from kids. To this day, I have no idea whether the woman’s statement reflected a corporate philosophy or simply her own opinion about Santas being all alike. Regardless, I felt hurt, angry, and to be quite honest, disgusted.

“Thank you,” I managed to say. “But I think I’ll pass this year.”

As it happened, I got a call a few weeks later from my old friends at Photo Promotions offering me a season-long Santa Claus role at a mall in Massachusetts. They did not require an exclusive contract. They also didn’t need me for the same full-time commitment.

Although fewer hours meant less money, it opened up my schedule to book appearances at day care centers, nursing homes, office Christmas parties, and of course, home visits before Christmas. I’d be doing a lot more driving, but the opportunity to make so many personal appearances outside of the hustle and bustle of the mall environment enlivened my Christmas spirit.

Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that the Photo Promotions people had become quite concerned that camera phone photos of Santa Claus would cut into
their sales. My group sing-a-longs with people waiting in line were no longer allowed because there would be no way to prevent mall patrons from snapping pictures and videos of Santa leading the chorus. What’s more, whenever I went on a break, Photo Promotions insisted I could only walk to my dressing room accompanied by a helper who would make certain that no one took my picture along the way.

Another change also didn’t sit well with me: I had to remain seated constantly while on the Santa set. Even with no line and nobody waiting to sit on Santa’s lap, I had to stay in my chair, or at least not walk anywhere beyond the white fences in order to prevent random photos from being taken by passersby.

I still did what I could to interact with people while remaining seated. I would wave and smile at people coming down the escalator toward the set. During slow times when no one sat on my lap and a family walked past, I would give a hearty “Ho, ho, ho!” From my chair, I even made friends with the mall walkers who came to the mall to do their exercise. I could always spot mall walkers because they would do laps around the mall, over and over again. With some of them, each time they would pass by the Santa set, I would hold up fingers to keep count for them of how many laps they had done and then give them a smile.

Even so, despite reaching out with grins and winks and ho-ho-ho’s, things felt off for me. Besides feeling
uncomfortable with the new policies of my employer, I sensed a kind of pall in the air. The helpers seemed less happy. The parents appeared more stressed and less patient. Many of the stores had already replaced the traditional
MERRY CHRISTMAS
signs with more politically correct
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
signs.

Then I experienced something that had never happened to me in all my years of being Santa Claus. Shortly after Thanksgiving, I drove about ninety minutes across Massachusetts to appear at a family’s Christmas party. They’d made the reservation months earlier, telling me to expect a large number of kids along with relatives and friends of relatives. I had reserved up to two hours for this visit, since that many children meant countless photos and lots of Christmas lists to hear, and I didn’t want to rush anything.

As I drove into the neighborhood where the hosts lived, I saw cars parked all along the street leading up to the brightly lit house.
Wow, this is quite a party,
I thought with a little smile.
This is going to be fun!
I temporarily double-parked in order to dial the parents’ phone number, tell them I had arrived, and ask how they would like to announce my entrance.