‘Simply Acting Nice to All:’ What it’s like to be Santa Claus

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Cleveland Plain Dealer – (Dec. 24, 2023) CLEVELAND, Ohio — Santa Claus may well be the world’s biggest, most recognizable celebrity. Move over slim, tanned and toned movie stars. Christmas belongs to the chubby man with the white hair, fair skin, and rosy cheeks, beloved around the world.

“I told my wife this is the closest thing I’ll ever know to what it’s like to be pretty,“ said Santa, laughing. “People just want to be around you and talk to you, hug you, and take their picture with you.” This time of year, Santa has many helpers, to meet all the nice boys and girls who sit on his lap and tell him their wishes. A few of them took a break from to talk to cleveland.com

Take Dave Sayre, who lives in Amherst and maintains a day job as a nurse at the Cleveland Clinic in Avon. But during the Christmas season, he delivers whole lot of joys to Santa’s true believers in Northeast Ohio.

In the busy season after Thanksgiving, he even visits especially good kids.

“The children answer the door and let me in, and I tell them that the elves told me they made the nice list this year and I wanted to make a special stop just to thank them,” he said. “It’s really humbling when I come back year after year and I see my picture on their mantle from the previous year. You actually get to see the children grow up.”

He gives kids some guidelines to keep the Christmas wishes simple. “I always tell them there are three things that Santa doesn’t bring, electronics, pets and the last thing is a boyfriend or a girlfriend - so don’t even ask!” Sayre said. “That last bit usually gets a pretty good laugh from the older ones.”

But in many ways, he thinks the experience is as important for the parents as the children.

“More times than not I see tears in the parents’ eyes,” Sayre said. “Kids grow up way too fast. If we can capture a moment of simplicity and sincerity with their children, they know it will be a memory for the rest of their lives.” “I just try to suspend reality for a minute and let them be kids.”

Even in the off-season, clever kids can spot old St. Nick, so lively and quick.

“I was recently in the store getting new glasses and there was a little girl who kept giving me the eye,” he said. “So I just put my finger to my mouth, winked, gave her a look and said ‘Shhhhhhhhh,.’

”Are you the real Santa?

Ben Belhorn is in his third year helping the jolliest old elf.

Belhorn remembers meeting Santa as a kid at Lazarus’ Santaland in downtown Columbus, the window displays and the magical wonderland that transformed the department store.

Consequently, his goal is to be the kind of magical Santa that kids will never forget.

“I made it my mission to be that Santa Claus that makes an impact,” said Belhorn. “I tell them why the reindeer fly and how Rudolph got his red nose and all the different things that I’ve woven into my North Pole story.”

Occasionally, however, after annual visits to see Santa in shopping malls, garden centers and parades, a pesky little question arises in a child’s mind: Which of these so-called Santa’s is real? Which one lives at the North Pole with the elves making toys? They can’t all be real, or the same person? Or can they?

The answer to the doubters growing up, says Belhorn, is simpler than you might think: everyone is Santa, and Santa is everyone. His ambassadors simply look the part.

“The real Santa Claus is here,” he tells skeptical children with a wink and a nod. “It’s up to you to figure out who’s the right one.”

“Santa is a real industry,” said Kathi Gant, who represents the big guy as Mrs. Claus, next to her husband Kona’s Santa for 12 years at Petitti’s Garden Center in Avon. “Santa’s are very competitive. They want to be the best Santa, they want to be the coolest Santa, they want to be the most popular Santa ... it’s like oh my goodness!”

In the 12 years there, the pair say they were privileged to take part in so many people’s personal moments; everything from pregnancy announcements to marriage proposals, to final photos with a terminally ill child.

They’ve been given numerous cards and gifts, and a child once even gave up his beloved blankie so that Santa could give it to another child who needed it. The Gants say they love to be forever a part of the family Christmas memories of complete strangers, their faces on display in countless Cleveland area homes. “Occasionally the parents would bring previous year’s pictures to show us like baseball cards,” said Kona Gant.

But sometimes it still sort of takes them by surprise. Like the time Kathi, who in the off-season serves as a social worker, says she walked into the office of a professional colleague and saw picture of her Santa-husband on the desk. “You just never know!” she said. They’ve created a network of Scottish Celtic Santas called the Clan Claus Society, and by mentoring the new the new Santa and Mrs. Claus at Petitti’s. Kona even passed on his prized handmade, leather-bound copy of the “the nice list” to their new mentees.

Simply Acting Nice to All

As anyone who has ever been a parent knows, the magic of Santa lies in the spirit of the kindness and joy he brings, not the man himself.

The way Sayre tells it, the truth of Santa is in what his name stands for: Simply Acting Nice to All. One might say he’s a bit like the Velveteen Rabbit. Love is the magic that makes him real. And that love lives on in all of us, even after the curtain separating childhood and adulthood is lifted.