Some days, the fat man just wants the fat lady to sing.
He wishes the holiday season would end already. His back aches, his red suit feels like a spacesuit, his cheeks have gone numb from smiling for 12 hours -- and still the kids keep coming and coming, like ants at a picnic.
"When the last gig of the season is finito," says Victor Nevada, 61, a professional Santa Claus in Calgary, Canada, "I have a bottle of rye whiskey and some Diet Coke by the bed, and a couple of novels, and I'll phone in for pizza, and I won't get out of bed for two days, and if I don't see another child again till next Christmas -- that's OK with me."
It didn't used to be this way. For a century or so, being Santa was something like being a golfer on the senior tour -- a leisurely, seasonal pastime for men of a certain age and genteel demeanor. But being Santa has changed dramatically in the last few years, say Santas across the U.S. and Canada. More taxing, more complicated, the job now comes with grueling hours and hidden pressures.
As Christmas becomes more commercialized, so must Santa. As the holiday begins earlier each year, so must its spokesman and standard-bearer. What used to be a three-week gig has become a two-month grind, from the day after Halloween to New Year's. Often you answer to three equally demanding bosses -- the parent, the mall, the photographer -- and one all-powerful overseer, the child, who has come to view Santa as a cross between a birthday party clown and a miracle worker. A hybrid of Bozo and God.
Carl Anderson, a psychologist and adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote his dissertation about the effects of Santa on children. He's read widely and deeply on the subject of Santa, whom he calls a hopeful and comforting figure that historically provides solace during times of war and economic hardship. "You go back far enough," Anderson says, "that's the whole origin of the custom. Whenever there's a need for hope, there's more turning to Santa, more energy given to it."
It's a lot for one man to carry on his red velvet shoulders.
Maybe all this added pressure isn't the reason a Santa in Atlanta earlier this month knocked a woman cold with a 2-by-4. Maybe it's not why 30 Santas got into a drunken street brawl two weeks ago at a charity fundraiser in Wales. (Five Santas were arrested.) But it's undoubtedly why so many professional Santas sound edgy, spent, as if they might come down with the flu before they come down the chimney.
