SAN CLEMENTE : Scrooge Was a Part of His Christmas Past

Fred Shragai of San Clemente remembers the year when his father refused to let him have a Christmas tree in the house.

“My father was an absolute non-believer who I would call a Scrooge,” Shragai, 65, recalled of the year he was 4 and living in Miskolc, Hungary.

“That scene, where he would not let me keep the tree, left me with some very vivid and bitter memories that I carried with me my whole life,” he said. “Something that I wanted to believe in and have belong to me was taken away.”

Still, he grew up to be like his father, he admits.

“I really used to be a spoiler of Christmases,” Shragai said. “I couldn’t stand children. They made me nervous. And I didn’t care about feelings, emotions or good deeds. I was out to make a profit all the time.”

Then in 1979, Shragai underwent open heart surgery for five artery bypasses--and suddenly things changed.

Since then, has spent every Christmas donning a red Santa Claus costume, buying thousands of dollars worth of gifts out of his own pocket and distributing them at numerous Christmas functions.

“I started thinking about life and how vulnerable I really was,” said Shragai, a former real estate broker who still works part-time.

Now Shragai drives a car with personalized SANTA license plates, carries red-lettered business cards with his “North Pole” post office box number printed on them, and answers all letters sent to him, including those from some fans in Poland.

He also boasts something that most uniformed Santas cannot: a real white beard, along with tufts of snowy hair top his compact frame, which had a Santa-sized belly until he lost 57 pounds in the last six months.

“When I’m not dressed, people tell me I look like Santa,” Shragai said. “Ten times a day, they tell me. But I tell them they’re wrong, that I don’t look like Santa Claus, I am Santa Claus.”

His favorite part of the Santa role, he said, is being able to evoke the same response from adults as he does from children.

“Adults are taken as much by me as the children are,” Shragai said. “Their eyes light up. They have a big smile, and it’s a pleasure for me to create that tranquil atmosphere. It opens up entries to people’s hearts, even in the most hard-core businessman.”

He also said he feels a strong need to provide to other children the loving Christmas spirit he missed in his youth.

“Maybe all this is to make up for that,” Shragai said. “I feel that what I do is not to emphasize presents, but to show, feel and express lots of love. That’s what Christmas really is.”