Playing Santa Claus is a tough gig. Oh sure, anyone can stuff a pillow under a cheap red velvet jacket, paste on a fake beard and bellow “Ho Ho Ho.” Such people are amateurs unworthy of the title Father Christmas. The best Santas take the role seriously. They bulk up. They exude jolliness. And they sport killer beards.
“The beard is major,” says Dina Litovsky, who learned more about St. Nick than she ever thought possible while photographing Discover Santa 2016, the world’s largest gathering of professional Santas. Some 750 impersonators descended on Branson, Missouri in July to learn, among many things, how to grow whiskers befitting the role. “They’re trying to have the best Santa image they can,” she says. “They want kids to really believe in them.”
Like most people, Litovsky believed in Santa as a child. As with so many illusions of childhood, her belief had long since given way to something approaching cynicism by the time National Geographic sent her to the convention. “I imagined it would be a bunch of rowdy Santas drinking,” she says.
Instead, she found people dedicated to the business of Santa. For five days, Kris Kringles attended workshops and panels covering everything from getting the best ruddy cheeks to calming crying kids. They browsed vendor booths offering the latest in walking sticks, cooling vests, and extravagant $1,000 Santa suits. They played softball at the Sno-lympics and enjoyed a little dinner theatre aboard the Showboat Branson Belle, where they set a record for “largest Santa jingle.”
Litovsky arrived just in time for the Parade of Red Suits, where Santas, joined by 250 Mrs. Clauses, elves, and reindeer, marched through an outdoor shopping mall before a sea of wide-eyed children. They wore robes more suited to an Arctic freeze than 90-degree temperatures, but smiled through their sweat as they flung fake snow at the crowd.
Her wonderfully bizarre images show Santas sunning by the pool, sitting in long rows at dinner, and zipping through parking lots on motorized scooters. Many of the men are veterans or retired professors who volunteer at children’s charities and hospitals. They aren’t jolly because they play the role. They play the role because they’re jolly. “It felt as if they became Santas because of their personalities,” Litovsky says. That’s the one thing that’s even more important than a killer beard.
