Look It Up : Santa Claus? He’s in Book

Santa Claus lives in Torrance, drives a 1960 Cadillac Eldorado, works behind a red desk in a poolside office and jokingly lists Richard Nixon among his reindeer.

With his long gray beard, bushy eyebrows and red and white suit, he looks the part.

And nothing seems to irk Santa more than the “subordinate Clauses” in shopping malls.

Claus was once known as Winfred Eugene Holley, but he had his name legally changed 4 1/2 years ago. “My goodness, if you’re going to be Santa Claus, you don’t want to lie to children,” he explained.

The 68-year-old Claus, who carries a California driver’s license listing a North Pole address with a Torrance ZIP code, spends the year writing cards to children and, during the holidays, visiting schools and hospitals.

He is listed in the phone book under Santa Claus, with his post office box address and a number for a year-round, taped phone message.

He said he has been able to make some children’s wishes come true with the help of various organizations, such as the Shriners and the Masons.

People used to tell him he resembled the mythic character, he said. “I kind of resented it a little bit, and then I got to thinking . . . that would be better than sitting in a rest home and waiting for a fifth of prune juice on Saturday night.”

He also saw it as a way of combatting what he considers the bad being done by the “subordinate Clauses at the malls.” Screaming children are forced upon the laps of fake Santas and sometimes tickled with a feather, he said somewhat annoyed.

“The mothers will throw the baby at some ugly old man with a false beard and wrinkles,” he added.

He said he is “qualified for the job” because he visited 149 countries while he was an aircraft contractor. Claus, who collects old Cadillacs, said he uses some of his Social Security and retirement money to send cards to children, but also relies on donations of stamps and candy to support his role as Santa.

Claus said not too many people question his identity when they see him in person, but, “When I say my name on the phone, it’s always, ‘Now don’t hang up, because this is Santa Claus,’ because if I don’t (say it), and sometimes if I do, they hang up.”

Holiday-Related Names

Other Southland residents can relate. Those with Christmasy names have had to listen to the same jokes over and over again, prove their identity and, occasionally, answer prank phone calls. Most, however, said they have fun with their holiday-related names.

Her friends have fun with her name, too, said Carol Christmas of Los Angeles. Besides reversing her names--Christmas Carol--she said, “They call me Happy New Year, Happy Thanksgiving, anything. . . . They have fun, and I like it.”

Once she went to see Steve Allen’s television show and “he asked me if my father was St. Nick. And I said, ‘You can call him that if you want to because he left my mother with 18 bundles.’ ”

Clifton Christmas, also of Los Angeles, said the jokes about his name “keep me going. . . . They say Christmas is here right now, even if it’s July.”

“Growing up with the last name of Christmas, you take a lot of razzing,” agreed Millard Guy Christmas Jr., a Los Angeles playwright and actor. “What I’ve started to notice the last few years is people started playing games. Like you can’t get an appointment with a doctor for six months and then all of a sudden, you have an appointment on Christmas Eve. Like let’s have Mr. Christmas in on Christmas Eve, ha, ha, ha.”

“I’ve gotten calls in the past, and I’m sure it’s from men and women in bars,” said Joseph E. Santa of Mission Viejo. “One woman was cussing me out because I didn’t get her the $2,000 fur coat she wanted. . . . I just go right along with it, even the ones in the bar. I apologize and say maybe it’s still coming in the mail.”

The 70-year-old, 5-foot-8 Santa, who has eight children and 11 grandchildren, said he asks the children who call if they have been good and what they want for Christmas.

Thanks From Parents

“I tell them that my great-great-grandfather was Santa Claus and I’m helping him out . . . and he’s up there at the North Pole.” Occasionally, a parent will pick up the phone and thank him.

He tries to help parents out in other ways, too, he said, by telling mischievous or ornery children in malls or train stations that he is Santa. Most settle down. “Some of them raise their eyebrows, and some look a little scared like they better straighten up,” he said.

Kris Kringel, an insurance agent and pastor who lives in Rolling Hills Estates, said his name “helps in business because it’s a happy sounding name and there’s a lot of sentiment attached to Christmas.”

One time, however, “it kind of backfired,” he said. A girl, 3 or 4 years old, asked him if he was really Kris Kringle. When he said he was, “she kicked me in the shins. She was disappointed with what I had brought her last year.”

His real name is Henry Albert Kringel, but he was nicknamed Kris in the 1940s after the movie, “Miracle on 34th Street,” was produced.

“The difficulty comes when I try to reach an executive to try to talk to him about his insurance needs and I have to get past the secretary. It’s not so bad other times of the year, but after Thanksgiving it gets bad. . . . I hear them turn around and say, ‘Some nut says he’s Kris Kringle.’ ”

Sometimes, a child calls him thinking he is Santa Claus, Kringel said. “I play along with it. It’s fun. . . . It’s relaxing. It’s like petting a dog. . . . It gives me time to stop and smell the roses.”

One Mrs. Claus in Glendale who asked not to be identified said, “I’ve had calls at all different hours of the night when I lived in Long Beach. The funniest one, I guess, was when a guy asked me if he could have the playmate of the year in his stocking. . . . He wasn’t a little kid.”

Usually Hangs Up

She said she usually just hangs up on people who call, asking for Santa Claus. If a child is old enough to use the phone book, she reasoned, he is old enough to know better.

Vickie Santa of Long Beach said she lets young callers think they have reached Santa Claus’ residence because “it’s Christmas. Why not make a little kid happy?”

But, if they ask if she is Mrs. Santa, she said, “I usually say Vickie and then they don’t say much.”

She named her son, 3, Nicholas. “He’ll probably hate me when he gets older,” she said.