Santa’s in the hot seat, squirming away

Whether parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt or congenitally single friend of the family, many adults face a thorny question during the holiday season: How to sustain children’s carefully constructed Santa myths when they hover on the bittersweet cusp of disbelief?

What exactly are the ethics here? On a recent rainy night, in an impromptu interview at their faux gingerbread cottage at L.A.’s Grove shopping center, the weekday Santa and his three assistants shared their thoughts on how to navigate the diverse and idiosyncratic belief systems of thousands of parents and children.

They admitted the pressure is great: A careless comment could earn the wrath of a parent or ruin a child’s Christmas.

“I just don’t want to mess up what their parents are telling them,” said Joe Leavitt, an actor with a genuine white beard who has played Santa for 11 years.

In an instant, he and his assistants must gauge the age and sophistication of a child, as well as the investment of the parent in the Santa myth. They begin with a few rules of thumb: By and large, kids are safe in the realm of believers until about age 6. Then things start to get hairy.

“By 7 or 8 they are really starting to get suspicious,” said Leslie Murphy, Assistant No. 1.

“By 8 or 9 they are pretty clued in,” added Wendi Firenza, Assistant No. 2.

At that point, the assistants try to take their cues from the parents.

“Most of the time the parents still want them to believe,” said No. 2.

They debated who clings to the myth more fiercely. Perhaps for parents, the end of Santa heralds the end of an age of innocence. Children pick up on that and don’t want to burst their parents’ bubble. But children “don’t want to realize their belief system is a hoax,” said Santa.

Assistant No. 1 said some savvy children keep saying they believe long after they don’t. Their childish artifice, she suggested, is motivated by purely material concerns. “I think they’re afraid that if they stop believing, they won’t get any gifts,” she said. Many children in the age of suspicion enter the cottage like pint-size investigators. Their eyes scan the room and scrutinize Santa from head to toe. They stand in line and fire their questions accusingly at the assistants.

Is he the real one? (Yes, look at his beard!)

Where are Santa’s reindeer?

(Parked on top of the parking structure, of course!)Last weekend, said Assistant No. 1, one child saw that Santa was wearing black spats over his sneakers.

“If it’s the real Santa Claus, why is he wearing sneakers?” the child demanded. Before the assistants could come up with an answer to that one, the child’s mother intervened.

“You’re wearing sneakers, aren’t you?” the mother said. “It’s hot. He wears sneakers because it’s California.”

The interrogation can continue with Santa. Some kids climb onto his lap only to taunt him. To tell him they have seen Santas at other malls. Why should they believe he is real? This Santa invites them to pull on his beard for a reality check.

Other children display adult obsessions, layered over Santa mythologies. Santa recalled a 6-year-old girl who climbed onto his lap and said to him: “I am worried about your cholesterol.” She told him he ate too much milk and cookies, and needed to eat more carrots.

But it is the prepubescent disbelievers who are the real loose cannons, Santa said. He recounted an incident last week when three sassy 10- or 11-year-old girls marched in the back door of the cottage and confronted him.

“You know, there are like 100 Santas in town,” one girl said.

“I know you are just an actor in a Santa suit,” said another.

“Take off your hat,” demanded the third.

“They were just trying to show me how sophisticated they were,” Santa said good-naturedly. His assistants ushered the young skeptics back out.

Still, some children are so sweet and solicitous that Santa feels as if he has the best job in the world. He said one little girl last week made him a diorama of himself. She said she didn’t know if he was Jewish or not, so she made him a star of David too. She provided a letter documenting how good she had been this year, and also wrote a poem for Santa and Mrs. Santa. He promised to pass it along.

In more dire situations, though, the assistants said their job requires them to embrace a line of questionable moral integrity.

“A lot of lying goes on here,” said Joseph Sepulveda, Assistant No. 3.