Too old, too sick, too full of yourself to play Santa?

Frenetic Santa, high on Praise!

One of the fortunate things about "playing" Santa is no matter how good you are, or how powerful your magical visit is, it's over pretty quickly and you won't be back for at least a year.

I can't imagine keeping that kind of energy up year 'round.  

My wife and kids are patient with me as I practice my Santa sense of humor from December to December--but there are times when it surely must grate on them.   You can understand why the same qualities that make professional entertainers so terrific on stage or the tube,  wrecks marriages, fractures families and often ends sadly at the bottom of a bottle or in the dead end alley of addiction.   

Good as you are, thank heaven Santa only comes once a year, for their sake and yours.  

Auxiliary Santa skills often spill over into the community.  Six weeks ago, our LDS Bishopric asked if I would chair a committee to produce a Talent Show and Arts and Crafts Display on the weekend of the 24th of July --a wonderful time of year when Utah honors the courageous Mormon Pioneers with reunions, celebrations and a big parade down Salt Lake City's main drag.  

Of course I agreed and set about gathering a committee of the cream of our congregation to work out all the arrangements.   Last Friday night nearly 90 people sang and danced, displayed and exhibited and nearly 200 of our ward members showed up to celebrate.  We even had a live band and aromatic popcorn machine.   It couldn't have been more successful.  A close friend agreed to MC --and I was able to hang in the background as Executive Producer and watch everybody do their part and pull it off really quite well.

Then came the Sunday after  and all the pats on my back and the attaboys started rolling in.  The official announcement mentioned only me as the chairman of the committee and everyone else by category.  One of my best friends whispered that he had a good size pin to help relieve my swelled head--and we both had a tight little laugh.  As I wrote in a thank you note to the MC, "I love the planning and the doing--but the praising is something else."  

You begin to believe your own press releases.  Like the flu, it will pass.  I wrote back to my pin wielding friend "thanking" him for his willingness to conduct a little well meant surgery, and I included this poem, one that Santas who get a bit self-satisfied and impressed with their own value in the community would be wise to memorize and repeat when the praise gets a little intense:

"There Is No Indispensable Man"

by Saxon N. White Kessinger 

Sometime when you're feeling important; 

Sometime when your ego's in bloom 

Sometime when you take it for granted 

You're the best qualified in the room,

Sometime when you feel that your going 

Would leave an unfillable hole, 

Just follow these simple instructions 

And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water, 

Put your hand in it up to the wrist, 

Pull it out and the hole that's remaining 

Is a measure of how you will be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter, 

You may stir up the water galore, 

But stop and you'll find that in no time 

It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example 

Is do just the best that you can, 

Be proud of yourself but remember, 

There's no indispensable man.

The Flu spoils Santa's  perfect attendance

This applies to Santa in a sick bed, too.   At the height of my Santa career I was playing to big family and corporate parties two and three a night for most of December.  My greatest fear was that I get run down and suffer larangitis--so I took extra care to get enough sleep, relax, drink plenty of fluids and eat healthy.  Most of the time I was successful, but now and again through the years, I've invested in more cough drops and losenges than I care to remember.  (My first exciting year on tour with Marie Osmond I was fighting a cold the whole trip!)  A few years ago I succumbed to a little stroke in November and my doctors agreed with my wife that I should take a little time off--you guessed it--all during December that year.   

Being Santa--a poor excuse
for NOT losing weight

I would have made a lousy Santa anyway.  The stroke temporarily robbed me of my timing, my stage sense and most of all all my jokes!   Worse than larangitis on Christmas Eve is the rest of my life without humor because a little blood clot decided to go wild in a capillary under my hat!  

Gratefully, it turned out to be next to nothing and I came back, but the episode almost made me almost want to lose my Santa Belly.  A pediatric radiologist a dear friend  told me matter of factly that if I didn't lose a few lbs I could expect another stroke--and likely worse.  He taught me that, "Time is Brain"  I had assumed that my rotten feeling was an attack of low blood sugar--and I waited for two or three days to have it checked out with a brain scan.  "Instead of gulping a peanut butter sandwich, you should have immediately headed for the hospital emergency room." he warned.  I pass this on to stroke-prone diabetic overweight and otherwise jolly Santas everywhere.

Well, you gotta die of sumpin'  I'm 64 and though I don't have grandkids yet and my wife would be left with little more than last season's tax returns, I'm ready to go at any time!  (Sorry, I didn't mean to call down any death wish thunderbolts and such--but I keep a wary eye up,  just in case lol)

Death for  Santa would be hopefully conducted with dignity and out of sight of his impressionable young friends.  Moms and Dads can invent all kinds of stories about the event or even better, hire a jolly friend to fill in from now on.  

We moved to Washington D.C. while I worked as a news director in a big radio station--and we got homesick at Christmas for several of our friends and Santa clients.  I can remember calling one guy we had performed for many years and attempting to entertain him, by himself, long distance.   Trust me, it wasn't quite the same as the usual family gathering with the fun of dozens of his kids and grand kids laughing along.  That would be the only downside of leaving my Santa practice prematurely.

Beyond a stroke or larangitis, pneumonia blooming the day before Christmas eve is the worst.  I spent three or four days in the hospital getting reacquainted with my lungs.   It was the year I grew my own beard and the nurses (particularly the pretty blonde one that gently removed my sweats and helped me take a long over due shower) chuckled at my wheezing jokes and took better care of me than some others, I'd guess.  Something about not being able to turn IT off--even though my body could no longer support the spirit of Christmas!

When will I get out of the business?  Not as long as I can stuff myself in my little Kia-sleigh and hobble up the stairs to ply my Yuletide trade.  I know Santas in their 80s and 90s who still slip into their elegant suits, tailored to cover their weight loss in later years and bring a bit of cheer to patients our veteran's hospital.

The "fun" of playing the jolly old guy since I was in my late twenties is that now that I have the odd aching knees and creaking joints, I don't have to "act" so much.

Finally, Santa, if you have survived excessive praise and the ailments common to the Jolly Old Elf in his later years who would rather rise early and stay up late, refusing to take care of himself and burn out before the season ends, good on ya!  You've managed the performance process pretty well!  You have survived and kept the "machine" oiled and ready to give again another day.  We who wear the cap and bells and red and white salute you for your good sense, sound judgement and, well, BEING wise enough to portray the jolly old man himself!

JRH