Santa joins the Austerity Corps: "Hey, look, Johnny, you ain't getting all that"

And that includes that job for Daddy you
were whining about, you little snot

Santas-in-training at the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School in Midland, MI, learn how to size up families in need of having the big guy lower the boom on the kiddies' expectations.

"Santas -- including the 115 of them in this year’s graduating class of the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School -- must learn to swiftly size up families' financial circumstances, gently scale back children's Christmas gift requests and even how to answer the wish some say they have been hearing with more frequency -- 'Can you bring my parent a job?' "

-- Monica Davey in today's NYT, in "In Gloomy Economic
Times, Santas Learn to Help by Curbing Expectations"

by Ken

CONFIDENTIAL TO VIRGINIA: Yeah, sweetheart, there's a Santa Claus, in fact a million of 'em. But those lazy, ungrateful elves have been slacking off (damn unions!), so don't get your hopes up for this Christmas -- or, while you're lowering your expectations, probably for any Christmas in the near future. Ho-ho-ho to you!

"Here, at the nation's oldest, most celebrated, school for would-be Santa Clauses," the NYT's Davey reports from the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School in Howland, Michigan, "much has stayed exactly the same over its nearly 75 years."

A proper Claus ought to have pleasant breath, his beard curled just so and a hearty laugh that rumbles not from the throat but from deep below the diaphragm.

Yet this year, from the holiday parades, to the cheery carols piping from Main Street loudspeakers, to the "this way to Santa" lines at shopping centers, something more sobering has cast its shadow: the economic slump.

The result is a Christmas season in which Santas -- including the 115 of them in this year's graduating class of the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School -- must learn to swiftly size up families' financial circumstances, gently scale back children's Christmas gift requests and even how to answer the wish some say they have been hearing with more frequency -- "Can you bring my parent a job?"

Santas in Howland "tell of children who appear on their laps with lists that include the latest, most expensive toys" while their parents, "standing off to the side, stealthily but imploringly shak[e] their heads no." Then again --

some, like Fred Honerkamp, have been visited by children whose expectations seem to have sunk to match the gloom; not long ago, a boy asked him for only one item -- a pair of sneakers that actually fit.

But lowered expectations are by no means the rule, even in these dire times, and --

Some Santas say they now feel a larger obligation to speak up in the face of giant, expensive wish lists, an obligation to lower expectations in a way that only Santas (not parents) can get away with. At least one Santa, Gary Christie, had devised a specific routine for talking children out of their demand for an iPod or the like.

Another, Rick Parris, said, "When kids start asking for the world now, I just say, ‘Hey, look, Johnny, you ain't getting all that.' " The former Alabama state trooper added, "I just make sure to let them know that Santa seldom brings everything on a list."

Even with the economic downturn, not all the Christmas lists have grown shorter. Some children show up with elaborate printouts, cross-referenced spread sheets and clippings from catalogs. "I try to guide the children into not so unrealistic things, and I do tell them that Santa's been cutting back too," said Tom Ruperd, of Caro, Mich., who added that parents often silently signal their appreciation.

"In the end," says Fred Honerkamp, the Howard school grad-turned-lecturer who observed those diminished juvenile expectations, "Santas have to be sure to never promise anything."

The article will tell you most everything you've wanted to know about being a professional Santa, if not more. For one thing, it appears that many members of this year's record-size class at the Charles W. Howard school, founded in 1937 in Albion, New York, by a former Macy's Santa of that name with a view to professionalizing the Santa gig (the move to Michigan was made in 1986 when another veteran Santa, Thomas Valent, took over the operation), look at it as something of a last-resort jobs program.

"I'm trying it," said Joe Stolte, who, at 28, was decades younger than most of the bearded, portly, jarringly similar-looking men in rows all around him. "There are no jobs out there -- it's ridiculous," he said, adding that he had been surviving by doing odd jobs and cutting lawns in Saginaw and that his mother had helped him come up with the tuition ($400 for first-timers, $350 for others). "I like being Santa Claus. And I figure it comes once a year. It's a thing that's going to be there."

It's surprising that none of the GOP presidential "candidates" are featuring this as a centerpiece of their economic "programs." Really now, Paul Ryan, where are you when your country's crackpots need you?

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