Celeb Sighting: Spilling Santa’s Secret Identity

My sister Linda’s longtime beau is one of those guys who has tried to compensate for the migration of his hairline by allowing his whiskers to cover his chin and cheeks.

Alan’s beard is bushy, and as for color, much more salt than pepper. Not a bad look for a wildlife biologist whose laboratory is the desert expanses around Barstow.

Strangers who see Alan in the middle of nowhere might take him for a prospector, if not a lunatic.

Back in civilization, however, Alan is sometimes mistaken for someone else--only by children, however, especially this time of year. The resemblance is so striking, in fact, that I and my sweetie couldn’t resist the urge to perpetrate a fraud on her young siblings.

“Linda’s boyfriend,” I told Jenny and Chris, “is Santa Claus.”

We were taking Jenny, then 8, and Chris, 6, along on a family outing to Wild Bill’s, the Wild West-themed dinner show in Orange County. Jenny was a bit skeptical.

“Uh-uhh,” she said. “Santa lives in the North Pole. And he’s married.”

Oh no, we assured her, Santa just has his factory up north, and he and Mrs. Claus split up years ago. We added that off-duty, Santa prefers to be called Alan.

Any doubts disappeared when Alan, unaware of our little deception, gave the kids a warm, friendly greeting. The kids were mesmerized into silence. Wherever Alan went, their eyes followed.

For children, this is the ultimate celebrity sighting, much better than Elvis.

White whiskers are a necessity, of course. Some girth and spectacles help. Demeanor, however, may be as important as the beard.

“It’s personality more than looks. If you respond like Santa, children understand that’s who you are,” said Denny Smith, who for the last four years has done St. Nick duty at The Promenade in Woodland Hills. Smith is billed as: “Real beard. Real hair. Real fat. Real nice.”

He is among more than 1,000 men who are cast as Santa Claus each December by Cherry Hill Photography of New Jersey, which claims to be the nation’s largest Santa supplier, operating concessions in more than 400 malls, including more than 25 in Southern California. Company President Bob Wolfe estimates that “a couple hundred” of them have white beards that can’t be yanked off. (Cherry Hill is also in the Easter Bunny business, but Wolfe says the company doesn’t employ anyone who resembles a rabbit.)

Professional Santas who look the part in real life, Wolfe says, often play the role year-round, donning red sweaters to invite double takes. Kids ask them if they’re Santa, Wolfe said, “and they kind of wink.”

Smith is that kind of Santa. His beard and hair are long and snowy, his cheeks are rosy, his blue eyes twinkle.

“Every day of the year somebody calls me Santa,” he said on a break between visitors. Not just children, but adults as well. “A friend said to me, ‘Don’t you get tired of being called Santa?’ But I guess I don’t or I’d change the way I look.

“I really like it,” he added, “when the kids do it, the little ones from about 2 to 5, because they’re serious.”

Children in Smith’s South Bay neighborhood, he says, have been led to believe they are lucky to be living so close to Santa’s summer home. Sometimes they’ll bring young friends to his door to prove it.

And Smith says that in restaurants messages are sometimes passed to him from parents of star-struck children.

“They’ll say something like: I’m sorry to bother you but my daughter Sara thinks you’re Santa, and if it’s not too much trouble. . . . “

Smith says he likes to walk past the child’s table, then make a dramatic return.

“I’ll say, ‘Sara? Is that you? So nice to see you! Well, I’m on my way back to the North Pole now. See you next Christmas.’

“They enjoy the fantasy and so do I.”

Sitting next to Santa in the middle of the mall--he didn’t even invite me to sit on his lap--I told him about Alan. As plainclothes Santas go, Alan seems to be going through an identity crisis.

My sister recalls the time that she and Alan were walking down a supermarket aisle. A toddler standing in a shopping cart saw the man with the frosty beard. “Santa!” he exclaimed as he fell backward, as though literally bowled over.

Alan was not nearly as amused as Linda. For a while, it seems, he took the Santa sightings as a commentary on his girth. Kids that age are innocent and honest--and therefore cruel.

But Alan now seems to be growing into the role. The last time we talked about these Santa moments, Alan told me was thinking about pointing at the child and admonishing: “You better be good.”

Alan may have been joking, but that idea might be better than a wink. Smith says he sometimes tells kids to mind their parents. At the same time, however, Smith also disapproves of the way some parents use Santa Claus as a disciplinary device. Some little kids are afraid of Santa, he says, because they think he knows who’s been naughty.

There is, of course, another school of thought about Santa Claus--the Humbug School. This is the belief that Santa Claus is a nefarious tradition that should be abolished. Humbug adherents contend that adult society should not conspire to deceive children with the biggest “little white lie” of them all.

But enough about that. For without Santa Claus, there could be no plainclothes Santas and no moments like the one a few weeks ago when my young friend Chris told his big sister he wanted to go back to Wild Bill’s.

It seemed to come out of nowhere. Nearly two years had passed, yet Chris remembered it.

“Sure,” he told his big sister. “We went with Scott and Scott’s family. And Santa!”

Hangin’ with Santa. How could he forget?

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.