The Red Suit Diaries: A Real-Life Santa on Hopes, Dreams, and Childlike Faith

Diaries

The Red Suit Diaries

A Real-Life Santa

on Hopes, Dreams, and Childlike Faith

Ed Butchart

© 2003 by Ed Butchart

Published by Fleming H. Revell

a division of Baker Book House Company

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Butchart, Ed.

      The red suit diaries : a real-life Santa on hopes, dreams, and childlike faith / Ed Butchart.

           p.        cm.

      ISBN 0-8007-1814-3

      1. Santa Claus. 2. Department stores Santas. I. Title.

   GT4985.B87   2003

   394.2663—dc21                                                                                    2003010530

For Annie

and the God who loves us

The Diaries

DIARY ONE: Hopes

DIARY TWO: Dreams

DIARY THREE: Childlike Faith

DIARY FOUR: Believing

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

DIARY ONE

Hopes

Secrets I Must Tell

It was the night before the night before Christmas, the last day of a long Santa season that had begun in October. The clock on the wall showed just a few minutes before 9:00 P.M., and I was struggling to be the Jolly Old Saint Nick every child deserves to meet.

I had something heavy on my heart that night. Mrs. Claus, my beloved wife, Annie, had been in the hospital for three days, and I hadn’t been there to sit near her bedside or sleep nights in the cot next to her bed so she wouldn’t be alone. I was anxious for this shift to end so I could dash home, change clothes, and head for the hospital. There was a chance Annie would be discharged the next morning, Christmas Eve, and I wanted to be there to take her home. We both could’ve used a long winter’s rest.

The patter around Santa’s throne had been routine. Kids were lined up, waiting to tell me their wishes, and adults were impatient to have me help make their little ones’ dreams come true—at least for the moment. Jolly or not, I was required to be there, so I was working hard not to let the Santa experience seem my obligation or someone else’s bore. I even had an elf sitting on a stool beside me for good cheer. Trent was a little person, three feet, nine inches tall, seventeen years old, and delightful company. So Trent and I chatted between the interviews with the children, and our exchanges energized me and kept me going, one child after the next.

Then came this one little boy.

He couldn’t have been more than five, and he had been watching me intently, hands folded across his chest, for about ten minutes as he moved along with the flow, Mom at his side. Finally it was his turn for the Santa interview. He ambled up the steps and climbed onto my lap, seating himself on my left knee. He stared expectantly into my eyes. This was serious business.

Well, hello, I said, chuckling. The interview had begun.

Hello, the little guy responded.

How are you doing? I asked.

Fine.

Well,—and here came the inevitable question— have you been a good boy?

Umm . . . The boy paused and looked up at the ceiling. He tapped his chin with his forefinger. Umm . . . he repeated, scouring the ceiling.

What’s he doing? Trent whispered in my right ear.

We followed the boy’s eyes to the ceiling to see what was so interesting up there. Nothing. Yet still the little guy was tapping his chin and searching for . . .

Ah, I thought, he’s looking for an answer. Here’s a little man giving great thought to a most important question.

He’s thinking, I whispered to Trent.

About what? Trent was incredulous.

I don’t know, I chuckled, but this ought to be good!

Suddenly the boy stopped tapping his chin. Well, he said as his eyes looked intently into mine. Well, he started over in an effort to get his answer just right, I had a pretty good August . . .

Trent fell off his stool, and I burst into laughter as the kid, clearly puzzled, wondered what was so hilarious. Well, it was probably the first honest answer this Santa had ever heard!

Mustering control, I asked, So what do you want for Christmas?

The boy grinned big as Christmas and started his list, but I don’t remember his reply. My ability to concentrate had left in the face of his startling honesty. He took such an important question seriously and wanted Santa, in whom he had great trust, to get only the truth. Such faith in me! Such hope, despite his eleven bad months!

Regaining composure, I listened intently and admonished, Well, remember to always be a good boy—and not just in August. Then I sent the little guy on his way back to Dad.

Mom was waiting nearby and couldn’t stand it. She just had to find out what her boy had said to cause so much levity. I recounted the exchange in a whisper in her ear.

He really said that? she mused, awed by her baby’s candor. She laughed, and Trent and I joined her, the two of us erupting again as Mom bade us farewell.

Just then I realized I had witnessed a miracle of Christmas that my job gives me the privilege to see—an expression of childlike faith and hope, all tied up with a bow, offered in a single whisper or a letter from the heart to a place way up north.

Suddenly gone were my feelings of anxiety and my desire to finish this last night of Santa duties. With heightened expectation I looked to the next child, and the next, for that one magical moment of sheer joy, hope, and belief in all that’s good—in promises too good to be true.

These are the moments that convinced me some secrets, like some promises, are too precious to keep to myself. They must be shared. And so begins my open diary to you . . .

In the Beginning . . .

Every Santa remembers his or her very first time in the suit.

I was a senior in high school, working a holiday retail job at Belk’s Department Store in my hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. I had the opportunity to borrow the Belk’s Santa costume, and my brother had just the job for me. Come to the house dressed as Jolly Old Saint Nick, he prompted, and help wean Susan—his toddler, my niece—of her beloved blanky. Susan had promised to give up her baby blanket, but only to Santa for one of his elves, and only if Santa himself came to her house to claim the prize.

How could playing Santa and helping my brother hurt anything?

I agreed, imagining my brother and sister-in-law’s relief to get rid of that worn-out blanket—and little Susan’s delight at getting Santa to herself for a moment. She was sure to be mesmerized. And what fun it would be to play Jolly Old Saint Nick without her ever knowing it was Uncle Ed.

I rehearsed hundreds of greetings throughout what seemed to be a slow day at work. By evening, I was in the spirit of the surprise. I grabbed the suit, really feeling the part, and drove to my brother’s neighborhood. I parked in a lot down the street and wiggled into the red slacks and jacket, then adjusted the beard, belt, and hat as I strode up the driveway. My heart was all aflutter as I took a deep breath and rang the bell.

I could hear Susan fumbling with the knob, then I watched her eyes widen as she opened the door. But before I could make my well-rehearsed greeting, she shrieked and raced across the living room, down the hall, and into her room. In a flash she was under the bed.

I looked helplessly at my brother. Bob looked helplessly back. Neither of us had anticipated Susan’s alarm about this personal visit from Santa. After all, it was her idea.

For an awkward moment, I stood dumbfounded as Bob sighed and gestured to an overstuffed chair. Sit, he said perfunctorily. He was just learning to expect the unexpected from toddlers.

So I sat, but not without fears of my own. I’d stuffed the suit with two pillows, my ears were contorted by the strings holding on the long, flowing beard, and my 7 3/8 inch head was forced into a 6 1/4 inch wig. Any minute I feared the buttons on my suit would pop and the wig would squirt off my head, taking all my hair with it.

I held my breath as Bob and my sister-in-law, Virginia, tried talking Susan out from under her bed. They reminded her of her promise and reassured her that Santa loved her and would never hurt her. Then they begged.

Nothing worked.

My spirits were melting, along with the rest of me under all the Santa gear. By the time Bob pulled Susan out from her hiding place to comfort her, I had soaked the pillows and my beard with sweat. Maybe if Susan sees Santa is really Uncle Ed, I thought, she might calm down. Of course, that would ruin the Santa surprise for every Christmas after this . . .

I sweated more over what to do. It only took a minute to see there was no danger of my niece discovering my real identity. There was no way she was coming close enough to find out. With her right arm extended as far as possible, she did offer her precious blanky—from the very tips of her fingers. I reached for the gift, thanking her in the deepest voice I could muster and promising that one of the elves would be glad to receive such a special blanket.

But Susan, with reflexes set on hyper speed, was already gone.

Laying my finger alongside my nose and giving a nod, I decided it was time for me to go too, if Bob and Virginia were ever to have some Christmas peace.

I left then, not knowing that Susan’s screams should have been expected. Seventy-five percent of children from eleven months old to age three scream and cry at the sight of Santa.

But I didn’t need a statistic to tell me the most important lesson of this experience. I saw it for myself: The red suit embodies something and someone so big and real that you must confront it or cry. Sometimes things to believe in make you do both. In any case, there is a power in portraying Santa, and with it a responsibility that calls for unconditional love—screams or not.

Embodying something to believe in is not a job for the faint of heart.

The Path to the Throne

Nobody sets out to be Santa Claus. Maybe in Hollywood an actor is selected for the role and goes down to makeup, where an artist sticks on a beard, adds a bit of color to the cheeks and nose, then sends the guy to wardrobe, where a dresser picks out a red suit and—voila!—Jolly Old Saint Nick. Yet like everything else about real life versus Hollywood, becoming Santa just isn’t that easy.

Of course, after the encounter with my screaming niece, I had no intention of wearing an all-red suit ever again. In fact, I didn’t particularly care for kids, especially little ones and infants. Maybe Susan did me in, or maybe I was just predisposed to be more annoyed than enamored with anyone vulnerable.

In any case, for the next forty years I became more like Scrooge.

I finished college at the University of North Carolina and took my journalism degree into the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant. I donned green or tan suits every day as an infantry unit leader and learned forty-three