Mr. Bingle Helps Save Christmas in New Orleans

The cold world of commerce had done in Mr. Bingle.

The beloved holiday mascot -- a portly papier-mache snowman with holly leaves for wings and an ice cream cone hat -- had long graced the entrance to the New Orleans department store.

But times changed, and Mr. Bingle was deemed irrelevant, banished to the dark corner of a warehouse. Then, lifted by a spirit of togetherness and a rediscovered love of their city, residents banded together to return him to a place of grandeur and distinction.

That was fiction -- the plot of a 2004 book, “Saving Mr. Bingle,” written by Texas author and New Orleans native Sean P. Doles. Now, just as things couldn’t get much weirder here in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the story more or less has come true.

Today, Mr. Bingle is the centerpiece of New Orleans’ holiday light festival. His triumphant return, to many in this depleted city, has helped save Christmas.

Each year for the holidays, starting in 1948, a two-story Mr. Bingle was placed over the entrance to the Maison Blanche department store on Canal Street, a bustling thoroughfare that forms the western boundary of the French Quarter.

Animated Mr. Bingle danced amid elaborate window displays. Inside, performers dressed as Mr. Bingle entranced children. There were Mr. Bingle puppet shows and, for a time, short Mr. Bingle television episodes that aired before the evening news.

The Mr. Bingle jingle -- in which “Bingle” rhymes with “Kris Kringle” -- was as ubiquitous in New Orleans during the holiday season as the song “Carnival Time” is during Mardi Gras. Some even claimed the figure had restorative powers; Edwin H. “Oscar” Isentrout, the puppeteer who performed the voice of Mr. Bingle, said a boy living at a home for disabled children had unclenched his fist for the first time after touching Mr. Bingle’s pillowy hand.

“He was never really just a commercial character,” said Rob DeViney, chief operating officer of City Park, New Orleans’ version of Central Park and the host of the lights festival, Celebration in the Oaks. “He became such an icon in New Orleans that people here felt like he was theirs, like they owned him.”

Eventually, though, department stores fell out of favor. Maison Blanche closed in 1998, and the landmark building became a Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Dillard’s Inc., the department store chain, bought New Orleans’ Maison Blanche stores, trademarked Mr. Bingle and tried gamely to carry on the tradition.

Dillard’s put him on display at a suburban mall but, most agreed, it wasn’t the same. And the truth is, he had long before started to show his age. Paint jobs and other cosmetic patches could not disguise the fact that his internal structure of fiberglass, metal and wood was collapsing.

Deemed a liability, he wound up in the back of a warehouse. Spurred in part by interest from Doles’ book, a few aficionados tried to get him fixed up. But the cost was estimated at $45,000, and money was scarce. Dillard’s still sold doll-sized versions, but for the big guy, it seemed, the end was near.

Then Hurricane Katrina roared ashore. The storm collapsed a levee just a few blocks from the industrial district where Mr. Bingle had been stashed. Every nearby warehouse was destroyed -- except the one housing him.

“We called around and found out he was alive,” DeViney said. “It seemed fitting that he had survived. It felt important -- it was important -- that he made it.”

The community began to rally around Mr. Bingle.

A local nonprofit foundation, the Azby Fund, decided to donate more than $1 million toward making sure that Celebration in the Oaks, a dazzling light display that covers 2 1/2 miles of roads in City Park, went on as usual.

That would be no small feat. The 1,300-acre park was swamped after the storm, which caused $43 million worth of damage. The park is not funded by the city and is self-sustaining, largely through paid-admission events like the lights festival. Managers were forced to cut their staff from 260 to 23 and had no promise of revenue any time soon.

But with the Azby money, and through the work of volunteers and free work donated by the local woodworkers and welders unions, the park managed to put together an abbreviated Celebration in the Oaks; it will run through Dec. 30. Part of the fund’s donation went toward refurbishing Mr. Bingle, now resting comfortably under the boughs of towering oaks, good as new.

On a recent blustery night, a small crowd began to file in. A National Guard band was playing Christmas carols. There was hot chocolate along with red beans and rice, a traditional New Orleans dish.

In some ways, the festival is a shadow of what it once was. In a typical year, half a million people come through. This year, organizers say, they will be lucky to see 60,000. But every person who walked in, it seemed, made a beeline for Mr. Bingle.

Organizers had retrieved recordings of Mr. Bingle’s television and puppet shows, which were playing through loudspeakers. Tom Paquin, 60, did a little jig when he heard Mr. Bingle’s jingle -- “Jingle Jangle Jingle; here comes Mr. Bingle” -- much to the consternation of his 9-year-old grandson, Thomas, who rolled his eyes.

“I haven’t heard that in years,” Paquin said. “We lucked out with this guy.”

Susie Kehoe positioned her great-nephews -- Tommy, 9, and Noah, 7 -- in front of Mr. Bingle for a photograph. Like many of the adults who stopped by, Kehoe, 50, said her first memories of growing up in New Orleans were the annual pilgrimages her family made to Maison Blanche.

“You’d get all dressed up with your little gloves and everything, and off you’d go to see Mr. Bingle,” she said. “We’re glad to see him home. He’s the only good thing that Katrina washed ashore.”

While researching his book, Doles discovered that Isentrout, Mr. Bingle’s puppeteer, had died alone in 1985 and had been buried in an unmarked grave.

Doles donated part of the proceeds from his book toward getting a gravestone for Isentrout, who had been plucked from obscurity nearly 60 years earlier while performing on the streets of New Orleans and was asked to bring Mr. Bingle to life.

This month, the stone, engraved with a picture of Mr. Bingle, was placed on Isentrout’s grave at Hebrew’s Rest Cemetery No. 3. It turns out the voice of Christmas in New Orleans was Jewish.

“I like that,” Doles said. “It creates a nice bridge between faiths during the holiday season.”

Doles said the old man would have been happy about Mr. Bingle’s return.

“He felt strongly that Mr. Bingle was an ambassador of goodwill,” Doles said. “This is exactly how he envisioned it, and I know he would be proud.”