THE SUNDAY PROFILE : A Father Figure : Papa Noel, Knecht Ruprecht, Jultomten, Pere Noel, Ru-Klaus. Why all the identities? Because Santa Claus is what eash of us needs him to be.
It wasn’t his clothes, one of those easy outfits that was born worn and comfortable. Navy blue cotton polo. Corduroys without a belt and deck shoes without socks.
It wasn’t the place or his pose. Alone on a bench, on a pier, relaxed but not hunching and with legs straight out the way cats stretch after hard play.
It was the eyes. They held calm. They were blue when he turned to the ocean, deep brown when looking at the beach and pure gold in sunlight; the eyes of both a wise elder and an unfearing child; the places where the best smiles begin.
Where everything else seemed wrong, these were the right eyes.
“You know, I don’t even own a pair of red socks,” he says. With a good grin. “But then in Denmark they think I wear gray. In Holland it is a bishop’s black robes and I ride a white horse. I’ve been dressed in green with britches and a full fur coat with broad-brimmed hat.
“I’m Papa Noel , Knecht Ruprecht, Jultomten, Pere Noel, Pelznickel, Ru-Klaus, Weihnachtsmann and Julenissen.”
But still Santa Claus?
“Well, yes,” he admits.
Then why all the identities? And why no Shredded Wheat whiskers?
“Part of it has to do with me being whoever and whatever you perceive me to be,” he explains. “In your case, you don’t really trust men in suits and ties. You’re a little too cultured for white whiskers and belly laughs. But you do find believability in an easy nature. So you see me in a polo shirt and cords. Would you have spoken to me if I’d decided to wear a 49ers jacket?
“I’m all ages and if you speak Russian, so do I. Whether you live in Berlin or Seattle, I can be in all places at once. You picked this pier and this ocean because it’s where you dream a little easier. That works for me. Did you know that off-season I’m the patron saint of mariners?”
He’s also believed to be at least 1,600 years old, born Nicholas of Bari in what would become Turkey. He was a bishop with a reputation for generosity.
“But that’s all it was, a blessing here, a visit to a sick parishioner there,” he recalls. “Then the miracle makers took over and suddenly I’d given dowries to three women to save them from the streets, tossed bags of money at the poor and become a first-round draft choice to be St. Nicholas.
“Pretty impressive stuff--especially if you were planning a religion with a festival in search of a mascot.”
So 800 years ago the festival of Christmas and the character of St. Nicholas formed a partnership that survived even the Reformation. In Dutch he became Sinterklass . Which the British picked up and chewed into Santy Klass before spitting out as Santa Claus .
“Also La Befana in Italy and Baboushka in Russia and Father Christmas wherever English is heard and the Magi wherever Spanish is spoken,” he says. “And I’m the patron saint of a thousand churches, entire countries, trade guilds, fraternities, unmarried women, merchants and pawnbrokers.
“I have no idea how pawnbrokers got in there.”
His intention, he continues, was to remain a doer of good deeds, a fuzzy figure focused by individual minds. But poets, authors, cartoonists and even the designer of Coca-Cola mugs wouldn’t leave him alone.
“They brought in reindeer and sacks of toys, milk and cookies and falling down chimneys,” he says. “Now I’m supposed to eat Oreo cookies and clean up crumbs with a Dirt Devil.
“They had me smoking a church warden’s pipe, which really upset the Lung Association. They have me living at the North Pole, married and working all year in a workshop where I sort mail and employ only the vertically challenged.
“But what the hey. I’m this abstraction, right, a spirit of giving and something you can’t see or hold. If giving me a friendly, harmless shape makes me real in a billion minds, then I am real.
“And life certainly becomes easier to handle if we accept that once upon a time is right now and we should believe in ghosts, tooth fairies, leprechauns and Simba. And there are worse images to wear than doofus glasses and an eggnog belly. Imagine being the Easter Bunny.”
But he does not embrace all characterizations. Santa Claus is not Richard Attenborough or Tim Allen. The only miracle on 34th Street is finding a cab. Hollywood, he fears, has done for Santa Claus and Christmas what it did to the American cowboy and Elliott Ness.
He does not endorse the PC Santas who have surfaced on E-mail and grant every request via Prodigy. Or overeating, driving under the influence, stores open until midnight, no interest payments until February, plastic assault rifles, proud trees killed for the season, calling Tiffany’s on a cellular phone, any gift that used to be an animal or public school policies reshaping Christmas pageants into “winter programs.” Or “Jingle Bell Rock.”
“I thought Dickens did well with Ebenezer Scrooge,” he says. “Repentance, generosity and sharing in one man. Nice premise. And I can live with 2,875 clones ringing bells for the Salvation Army, Toys for Tots and Christmas for Caring.”
But he believes couples miss the point when he spends $400 on cashmere for her and she spends $300 on leather for him and neither spares anything, not even a thought, for hungry kids sleeping in Downtown doorways. Does it occur to anyone that a silk bow on a Cadillac in a Beverly Hills showroom is a little tacky when innocents are being shelled in Bosnian basements?
“But hear this,” he says. There’s the sailor coming out again. “I’m willing to bet that today, nobody will be killed in Bosnia. Or in Northern Ireland, Haiti or the Gaza Strip. The Titanic didn’t sink on Dec. 25. I kept the Chicago Fire, the Northridge Earthquake and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre from ruining anyone’s holiday.
“That’s my gift to you every Christmas: a moment of love, an example of generosity and a day of devotion that precludes pain and tragedy. And that’s the spirit of Santa Claus.”
He claims he used his power to bring the Pilgrims to a safe landing at Plymouth Rock on Christmas Day, 1620. And, in 1899, to deliver a handsome boy to Mr. and Mrs. Bogart of New York City. They named him Humphrey.
“Still, my best work was getting Francis Church together with Virginia O’Hanlon,” he says. “She was the 8-year-old who wrote to the New York Sun almost 100 years ago and asked if I really existed.
“This is completely off the record, but I dictated Church’s reply: ‘Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. The most real things in this world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
“ ‘No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.’ ”
And while gladdening hearts, Santa would like to dump the notion that the day after Christmas is the start of another 364-day run of relentless ambition and killer competition.
“You don’t have to make like a saint,” he suggests. “But why not one small act of Christmas each day? Light a candle for someone. Carry a Milk Bone for the next dog you see. Smile at a stranger. Support the Clippers. Put a quarter in an expired parking meter. Let a bug go free.”
He sighed. Not in sadness, but from the downloading of Christmas Eve and surviving a million materializations to best monitor the season while hovering whenever, wherever there was need.
And all the time fretting a thought that although he is a vivid representation of Christmas, Santa Claus is but an accidental icon of Christianity. The Reformation saw to that. Hence his non-religious title of Father Christmas in Britain, Servant Rupert in Germany and Pere Noel in France.
“My work certainly overlaps the work of any Almighty, whomever he or she may be,” he acknowledges. “But selflessness, sense of family, pacifism, virtue, honesty, loyalty, kindness, generosity, understanding, tenderness and thankfulness were human qualities long before they became religious beliefs.
“And before they became, incidentally, the beliefs of all religions.”
He stood and said it was time.
It has been a long month and there is much to catch up on.
“Hanukkah may be done, but I’m still going to light a menorah,” he says. “You got a problem with that? So put a lump of coal in my stocking.”
Biography
Santa Claus. Or Papa Noel, Pere Noel, Father Christmas, St. Nicholas, Pelznickel and Julenissen Age: 1,600 years.
Native?: Born in Bari, Turkey, lives in the hearts and hopes of all persons.
Family: Married to the world with all its people his family.
Passions: Writing poetry of the season--”Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight. In lands of the fir tree and pine. In lands of the palm tree and vine. Where snow peaks stand solemn and white. Where cornfields lie sunny and bright. Everywhere, everywhere.”
On his favorite Christmas music: “Nutcracker Suite, Kenny G and anything played on a Celtic harp.”
On seasonal mail: “I do not reply to ‘Dear Santa’ letters from Donald Trump or Queen Elizabeth.”
On writing his autobiography: “It will reveal that Michael Jackson writes me every day and that I do not drink milk because of a lactose intolerance.”
Gift he would most like to give: “Peace on Earth.”
Gift he would most like to receive: “Peace on Earth.”