The most expensive Santa in Boston walked into the bathroom of his Cambridge apartment to begin getting ready for an appearance at the company holiday party for an investment management firm.

Getting ready is a relative term for Jim Manning, for he’s spent fifteen years building up the reputation that has made him the most sought-after high-end Santa in the game, and he spends every month of the year preparing for December. This includes taking improv comedy classes so he can better react when children hit him with tricky questions, and hours studying the hot toys, for Santa must know his toys. Especially when he’s charging $700 an hour.


Manning was, at this moment in his small bathroom, a 43-year-old man with large friendly eyes, a medium belly (he’s recently joined an Orangetheory gym to reduce the ol’ bowl of jelly), and thinning hair that is just completing its transition to gray. On his face was an intentionally wispy moustache that is there because it gives his fake mustache a good base to adhere to, and a trim goatee that is there so he doesn’t just have a wispy mustache.