The challenges of being St. Nick: In Texas, Santas talk shop at monthly meetups

DESOTO, Texas – Nothing snuffs the holiday joy like a bawling kid scared of Santa, and any Santa worth his fairy dust knows his waistcoat isn't earned until he’s learned to handle photo requests from parents of children not so tender and mild.

Such are the topics of discussion at meetings of The Sleigh Masters, a group of Santas and Mrs. Clauses who gather monthly at the south suburban Dallas workshop where Bill Dendy, a retired construction executive who now runs a Santa-suit-making business.

“If the parents come up to me and the kid is crying, I’ll say, ‘I’d rather not,’” Dendy, 67, told his fellow yuletide performers, who offered suggestions about how to handle the situation if the parents insist, from asking the parents to hold the child to putting the child in Santa's chair and standing next to it or even behind it.

Being St. Nick might seem all fun and reindeer games, but as the holiday season ramps up and thousands of Santas take to shopping centers, private parties and holiday theme parks nationally and worldwide, the Sleigh Masters are evidence that playing the beloved role takes preparation and precaution.

The group is a mix of veteran Santas and newer Santas, there to absorb wisdom or solicit advice about topics ranging from how to deal with tricky questions or situations to practical concerns like wardrobe, beard whitening or insurance.

“If somebody’s wanting to work on a particular performance, we can give feedback,” Dendy said. “We recently had a custom bootmaker here to talk about Santa boots. We work really hard to come up with stuff relevant to the Santa community.”

The group’s recent gathering, featuring 14 of its approximately 30 members, was its last before the holiday season kicked into high gear, a riot of red attire, several handlebar mustaches and sleigh bell ringtones. Dendy himself wore a candy-cane-dotted waistcoat over a Christmas-tree-design shirt.

On Saturdays in December, there’s not enough guys in a red suit to meet the demand," he said. "Then in January, we have a big debrief and go over lessons learned.”

Like many Santas, Dendy got into the role by accident, prodded two decades ago by his wife, whose firm was conducting its annual Christmas benefit for an East Dallas school.

“She said, ‘The committee wants to know if you’ll come and be Santa,’” he said. “My response was, ‘Am I the only fat guy they know?’”

Dendy called a friend who was a child entertainer to see if she had a Santa suit he could borrow, and the two devised a swing-dancing Santa and Mrs. Claus routine. That led to repeat invitations, and eventually he started doing other charity events.

Ultimately Dendy decided to go pro, performing as Santa at car dealerships and other sites during holiday season. He started Sleigh Masters as he networked with other Santas and sensed a hunger for feedback and advice about how to play the role well and deal with its challenges.

The Sleigh Masters include a full-time banker, a classically trained opera singer, a retired newscaster and a former Disney World Santa, some of whom still work regular jobs and play Santa on weekends.

Among the night’s group were Eric Brown, who drove to the meeting in his “Santa-fied” Tesla Cybertruck, complete with blow-up Christmas tree in back; Trish Viszneki of Dallas, a Los Angeles entertainment industry retiree who now performs as Mrs. Claus; Jacob Zufelt of Midlothian, south of Dallas, who works with a DJ doing Christmas karaoke (which he calls "carol-oke"); and Betsy Modrzejewski of Keller, north of Fort Worth, another Mrs. Claus, who also moonlights as the Tooth Fairy.

Christopher Saunders, a 45-year-old Santa performer from Tool, an hour southeast of Dallas, said he initially wasn’t sure about playing the role. His wife Elizabeth now accompanies him to events as Mrs. Claus.

"After my first one, a little girl saw me through a shop window and just exploded with excitement,” Saunders said. “There is no better feeling.”

The celebrity status is part of the fun.

“When you go out with Santa, it’s like being with a rock star,” Elizabeth Saunders said. “You have to be prepared to take pictures.”

Looking the part, from boots to beard

Santa’s concerns are many. First, you’ve got to look the part.

“You’ve got to walk the walk,” said Kirby Kinney, a third-year Sleigh Master from Arlington who specializes in corporate events. “You have to spend $2,000 for a real suit. Otherwise it looks like something a dad would get for his kids at Party City.”

There are boots and props to consider. Some Santas even procure their own throne-like chairs. Beards and moustaches require grooming.

“Some of us bleach our beards to keep them white,” said frizzy-bearded Lee Crawford, 69, another third-year Santa from Arlington.

“There’s no bleach with this,” said Larry Davis, a twinkly eyed Santa from Waxahachie, stroking his beard. “This is my natural hair. I was on a camping trip several years ago and a lady said, you ought to be a Santa. So I decided to try.”

Davis now performs with wife Sherry as Santa Larry and Mrs. Mimi Claus, and while their business focuses on home and corporate parties, he treasures his gigs at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport welcoming troops heading home from basic training.

Then there’s physique. While heft is a common attribute, Phil Martin, among the group’s leaner Santas, said his frame rattles adults more than kids.

“I’m a smaller dude,” said Martin, of rural Lake Fork, nearly two hours east of Dallas. “Adults will tell me, ‘You’re not Santa. You’re Ozempic Santa.’ Kids don’t say that. They don’t see weight. They see the suit.”

Adults, indeed, can present many of the challenges Santas face. Some Santas have dealt with overzealous Mrs. Clauses eager to outshine the main attraction. And Dendy has encountered parents at home parties where all the children are supposed to get gifts of equal value, but they want him to slip their child a nicer one.

“I will give the kid that present but I’ll tell them it’s from their parents, not from me,” Dendy said. “People don’t think about things like that. Santa’s an egalitarian.”

Kinney, meanwhile, once had his suit stolen while preparing for a gig at a mall.

“I put my bag down and some guy grabbed it when I turned around,” he told the group. “I heard the click-click of the suitcase and ran after him and tripped. Luckily, mall security caught him.”

Dendy advises Santas to purchase entertainer’s insurance, not only to protect their items but to shield themselves from liability.

“I told this one dude, ‘Get the insurance,’” he said. “Then one day, he was doing a Santa thing for a grocery store. The kids swarmed him outside and one of them face-hugged him at the knees and he nearly fell on a toddler, and all he could think about on the way down was the lawsuit.”

Saunders, the meeting’s lone Black Santa, recounted a gripping experience at a warehouse store Christmas event at which a young man asked to take a picture with him; as they posed for the standing photo, Saunders said, the man grabbed his posterior.

“There was definite cupping,” a wide-eyed Saunders recalled. “I’m thinking, ‘Hurry – take the pic. Take the pic.’”

Rising up the Santa hierarchy

Dendy is known as a “performance Santa,” specializing in audience interaction. Some performing Santas, he said, can do magic or are more musically inclined and play up those talents, while others, like himself, are more focused on storytelling.

“We capitalize on our strengths,” Dendy said. “I’m not known as a Santa who does magic. I’m known as a Santa where the magic happens just because I’m there.”

He uses his narrative skills to offer detailed answers, complete with maps, to kids’ questions such as how Santa can traverse the globe in a single night. He’ll elaborate on the various types of fairy dust that make reindeer fly or shrink his body so he can slide down chimneys or that open a portal between his toy bag and the North Pole to keep it filled.

Dendy says the vast majority of families whose homes he visits as Santa ask him to return. He attributes much of that to his diligent record-keeping, preparation and follow-up.

At the meeting, he held up for the group a red binder labeled “2022 Santa Visits,” with appointments noted with date, time and contact information. He has five Santa routines he’s perfected, he said, each with their own stories; on the back of each appointment he’s checked off a box next to the routine he used there to avoid repeating the same one the following year.

“I wanted five years’ worth of one-hour visits so that if I go to the same family five years in a row, I won’t have to repeat any stories,” he said. “I have a pretty good repertoire now.”

Dendy also sends thank-you cards with a Santa photo and a bag of chocolate-covered cranberries labeled “From Santa’s Stables: Reindeer Poop.”

Santas typically hopscotch through a hierarchy of on their way to “performance Santa” level, he said. Many start as Santas for friends’ or family gatherings, then progress to “charity Santas” doing volunteer gigs at schools or hospitals.

“The next one up from there is what we call a ‘photography Santa,’ the guy working down at the mall or a photography studio where they just need somebody who looks good with a pleasant personality,” Dendy said. “It’s absolutely shocking to me how many photography Santas couldn’t even name the reindeer if you asked them.”

The top of the tree, he said, is the performance Santa who works at public events like store appearances or tree-lighting ceremonies. Dendy himself charges $300 an hour, and while he doesn’t work the 10-hour days that some other Santas do full-time, “at the end of the day I can devote more energy into each child that I see.”

Santa Claus 'is the world's safe space'

Santa never promises anything.

“I just say, ‘I’m gonna work really hard so that you have the best Christmas ever,’” Dendy said. “‘I did pretty good for you last year, didn’t I?’”

It’s not all about LEGOs and hoverboards up there on Santa’s chair. The questions children pose can be uncomfortable and sometimes heartbreakingly poignant.

Ed Taylor, an Oregon-based Santa Claus who oversees the Worldwide Santa Claus Network and its more than 7,600 members, said kids will sometime ask if he’s real. Others challenge, “Santa, what’s my name?”

“They all think Santa should know their name,” Taylor said. “What do you say?”

Dendy has performed at children’s parties where older kids crash the proceedings and say Santa isn’t real. Dendy said he responds by saying they are welcome to believe what they want to, then deftly slips away to let a host know what is going on.

“You don’t want the kid’s belligerent attitude to disrupt the beliefs of all the other kids,” he said.

But sometimes, he and other Santas say, their questions are more difficult: A child might say: “I didn’t get anything last year. Was I bad?” Others might ask whether Santa can heal their parents’ failing marriage or help their ailing grandmother get better. To that end, Dendy now produces tiny red books for Santas to show children that they’ve tallied their requests.

Rhyan Anderson, a Santa from Burleson, south of Fort Worth, said he now carries one of Dendy’s books to his appearances.

“I’ll say to kids, ‘Santa’s a toymaker, but when I get back to the North Pole, Mrs. Claus and all the elves are going to say a prayer for you,’” Anderson said.

The key, the Santas say, is to let the children talk and let them know Santa is there for them.

“Santa,” Christopher Saunders said, “is the world’s safe space. ... There are negative experiences. But the positive ones outweigh all of them.”

Taylor, of the global Santa network, tries to make fellow Santas aware that while their visits with kids are barely moments, they can bring meaning to the conversation.

“I love what Santa represents,” Taylor said. “Santa is this avatar of kindness and generosity, virtues that are timeless and beyond any religious tradition. I talk with kids about being kind and why that’s important – not just to get good things from Santa Claus, but to be good for goodness’ sake.”

As the north Texas meeting came to a close, Dendy bid his fellow Kriss Kringles farewell.

“I have the greatest job in the whole world,” he said later. “I get to talk to Santa Claus every day.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Being Santa Claus: Sleigh Masters meet to discuss challenges and joys