DESPERATELY SEEKING SANTA : On a Scavenger Hunt for Father Christmas, Our Man Discovers a Ho Ho Host of Jolly Elves

He was trying to drum up business for a jewelry shop, a tactic that might have inspired the business owners next door. Only they apparently got to the costume shop too late--their man was dressed in a decidedly unseasonal clown suit.

Or maybe they figured one live Santa per street was enough. As it was, another Father Christmas was around the corner, seated in a plaza at Fiesta Marketplace. A line of children waited to get pictures taken with him as he sat before a backdrop of a snowy night scene. The legend printed above: \o7 AT&T le desea felices fiestas\f7 .

Translation: Santa was shilling for the phone company.

This blustery but glorious Saturday mid-day in Santa Ana was one stop in my second day of cross-county driving in search of Kris Kringle in all his incarnations, a sort of Santa scavenger hunt. The short-answer result: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, but you might not always recognize him. There are some surprises left in the jolly old elf.

There were no real rules for the search, although I avoided big indoor malls. It takes more than a story assignment to get me into a mall in December, and besides, I know what shopping mall Santas look like. (For the record, I did catch a distant glimpse of South Coast Plaza's Santa not long after he arrived. For a fat guy, he was kind of dwarfed by a forest of giant, inflatable toys, but he did look quite authentic.)

This, then, was a more impressionistic search, which means I basically had a license to make it up as I went along.

FRIDAY, about 6:30 p.m.: I start at the Lake Forest home of a friend, mostly because I want to borrow his Polaroid camera, having vague ideas of documenting the search. He decides to join me for awhile, and we head off into the night.

Of course, that's about when it starts raining. Hard.

Our walking tour of the neighborhood turns into a driving tour. It's a tidy middle-class tract (north of Trabuco Road, between Bake Parkway and Lake Forest Drive), and as we roll slowly through the Caminos, Paseos and Calles, I am pleasantly surprised by the level of decorating enthusiasm. Several houses sport lawnsful of plywood character cutouts, hand-cut and hand-painted: Santas galore, plus snowmen and elves and reindeer and one re-creation of a scene from that TV evergreen, "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

The rain-slicked streets make a nice mirror for the lighting displays. Whereas lights in my '60s childhood were big, bright and garish, these days lights are tiny and usually white, and some houses are covered in glittering sheets of them. Prettier, perhaps, but the old lights had a certain clunky charm.

One kitschy carry-over from the days of old are those big Christmas characters of molded plastic, lit from within with a single light bulb. One house has a full plastic manger scene on the driveway, complete with glowing Wise Men and Baby Jesus.

Glowing Santas (one pass too many over Chernobyl, perhaps?) are far more prevalent, though. Some popular models: standing Santa with fake chimney, usually mounted on the roof; regular standing Santa, often paired with standing snowman; plastic Santa in sleigh with reindeer, mounted on roof or suspended above lawn. My personal favorite is the glowing, disembodied Santa head, about two feet high and hung in windows or on a wall--perfect for that surreal touch.

Some streets are relatively dark and quiet, while others are veritable Vegas strips of pulsing lights, which tells me that a certain amount of decorating peer pressure goes on. Perhaps, though, there is another force at work. This neighborhood has a homeowners association, with its attendant rules and regulations. Most of the time, even a basketball hoop above the garage door can get you in trouble, but Christmas is the one time of year when you can do just about \o7 anything \f7 to your house and get away with it.

After about half an hour, I drop my friend back at his house and head west. Passing the Marine Corps Air Station, I take a right on Desert Storm (that's a street) and take a slow cruise through the station's family housing. Some of the moms and dads must be off feeding the starving in Somalia, but the urge to decorate goes on, perhaps even stronger.

The owners of one house have strung a few hundred lights between some trees, creating a nice starry sky for a miniature Santa, sleigh and reindeer suspended in the middle. Very cool (this is at the corner of Wake Avenue and Midway Place).