‘Could you just hold it for a minute?’ Santa asked desperately.

Venturing away from their blue redoubt on Sunset Boulevard, a group of missionaries from the Church of Scientology toured a few of the Valley’s busy streets last week, bringing good tidings and candy canes to all they met.

The church, disclosed in recently released court records to believe that Earth and 90 other planets were once ruled by a tyrant named Xemu, is taking pains to show that it is tolerant of the offbeat beliefs and myths of others, including Christmas and Santa Claus.

The church has installed a 65-foot Christmas tree and an imitation North Pole called Winter Wonderland near its home in Hollywood.

It sent last week’s mission to the Valley to spread the word that Winter Wonderland is for everyone and to put in a plug for the merchants of Hollywood.

It was a lighthearted adventure. The church hired Haven Reninger, the Newhall man with the team of famous red mules, to harness up seven of them in the role of Santa’s reindeer.

Reninger gave in to his assigned role as one of Santa’s elves only to the extent of wearing a green shirt over his hefty torso and a floppy green hat with a white cottontail that dangled about one ear. He kept his denim pants and pointed cowboy boots.

The mules sported their usual black leather, polished metal harnesses with the name Smiser Freight Service on the side of each. A glittery handmade sign identified them as Dancer and Prancer and so forth.

The sleigh was a trailer with pneumatic tires and a built-in ladder on the back. Church members had decorated it with imitation snow, three small Christmas trees and a stationary red sleigh that could seat six.

Santa wore the traditional red suit. Besides Reninger, he had four elves, all children in green costumes with white trim, and two adolescent girls in red and white as helpers.

The party assembled at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday across the street from Lanark Park on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Canoga Park.

When I arrived, a woman in a Mrs. Santa suit smiled and handed me a press release rolled up and tied with a bow. In flowery language it said that Santa swooped in from the North Pole and was going to be driving all around the Valley for a day. She said Santa would like to give an interview.

I asked what the purpose of the expedition was.

“All we want is that everybody is happy,” she said.

That made everything clearer. I thought they were trying to get publicity.

For a few minutes nothing happened.

Then about 30 preschool children arrived and swarmed around the sleigh. They were escorted by several women, most of them holding a child’s hand in one of theirs and a cigarette in the other.

One of the chaperons said the children were from the Scientology Day School in Hollywood.

While a young lad, who also smoked a cigarette, handed out candy canes, Santa climbed down the ladder and approached me.

The children saw him, however, and surrounded him.

“Hey, you got a big beard,” one of them shouted. “I want a kiss.”

“Could you just hold it for a minute?” Santa asked desperately, forgetting himself. But he snapped out of it quickly and gave a kiss on the cheek to the child and then half a dozen others who chanted, “Do me.”

After they sang “Jingle Bells,” Santa got back to me.

“So what do you want for Christmas?” he asked.

I wouldn’t tell. He wouldn’t tell who he really was.

“I’m Santa Claus,” is all he would say. “I just came in from the North Pole.”

About 45 minutes behind schedule, the expedition finally moved out with a clatter of hoofs and a soft whir of rubber. A car with its flashers on led the way. Three more cars and a motorcycle followed. Two men in a beat-up MG cut in and out, recording the event on videotape.

The mules stepped swiftly down Strathern Street to Canoga Avenue, then Parthenia Street, Winnekta Avenue and Plummer Street. They went by Northridge Fashion Square.

Along the way, Santa and Mrs. Santa waved and Santa’s helpers threw candy canes at everyone they saw on foot and in cars. Two slender women in dresses climbed on and off the sleigh and ran up and down the street inexhaustibly. They were handing out flyers that invited everyone to Winter Wonderland and urged everyone to shop in Hollywood.

A stereo behind the sleigh played “Jingle Bell Rock” over and over.

At CSUN, hundreds of students were out for an arts and crafts fair. But Santa’s sleigh missed them, turning north of campus, trying to get back on schedule.

Later it meandered through the Veterans Hospital and continued down Plummer Street, past hundreds of gaping students who were getting out of Sepulveda Junior High School.

Just before 4 p.m., Santa’s sweat-soaked mules pulled into the parking lot of Panorama Mall, their day’s end.

The video crew got a parting shot of Santa inviting kids of all ages to Winter Wonderland.

“I’d like to see everybody down there,” he said.

Santa then told me he would be out again the next day in a different part of the city.

When I asked where, he had to go around the corner to a pay phone to find out. Arcadia.

He still wouldn’t tell me who he was.