From bleaching one’s beard to showering with Christmas-flavored soap, being a professional Santa is harder than it seems

Do you have what it takes to be a professional Santa?

Santa Claus, it turns out, is not born. He is made.

At Santa School in Calgary, Alberta, rows of men in white beards and red velour suits learn the techniques that make one a true Claus. They start in early summer, says Jennifer Andrews, dean of Santa School and, she says, the lead elf.

Santa School is serious business.



“People are expecting Santas to be high-quality now, way more than they ever have before,” explains Andrews.

Andrews spends the year teaching aspiring Santas how to walk, talk, laugh and even smell (“candy canes and peppermint and Christmas trees”). All of her students have two things in common: they love children and they love to make people happy.

Nothing is left to chance – even location.



“We are in Canada, which is fitting since the north pole is the closest to us,” Andrews says, casually. “Santa recognizes that he obviously can’t be everywhere all the time, so he always wants his best regional representatives trained to be as much like him as possible. So he has asked me to train Santas so that they can be as much like Santa while he is not available.”

Tim Dowling at Santa school in Covent Garden, London, learning to be Father Christmas. Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian

The ambition to be a true Claus perceives no limits. It comes to men from all walks of life.



“Some of them have careers; I have Santas who are judges and lawyers and engineers and investment bankers. Really high-profile people in their businesses,” she says. “I also have Santas who are couriers and military men. There is a real cross-section. Some of them do this for a little additional income. Some of them do it, honestly, just because they love it.”



It also pays well. The right Santa can make thousands of dollars.



In the recent year, the public has developed high standards for their holiday entertainment. They are also willing to pay for it: a mall Santa can rake in somewhere between $6,000 to $8,000 during the holiday season.



Private events, like the ones Andrews books for her Santas, pay even better. Ric Erwin, vice president of Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, says he can make $8,000 to $10,000 for 60 to 90 hours of private events.

The public, however, is torn on how much the real Santa should be paid. Insure.com, which conducted the survey, determined that Santa’s real salary would be somewhere around $140,000 a year. That’s based on all the different jobs he does – like professional shopper, gift wrapper, letter reader, sleigh pilot, list checker – and how much each of those jobs takes in a year.

Even if being a Santa is someone’s main source of income during the holidays, talking about the money is a no-no, says Andrews.

“If they talk too much about the money they’ll make or if they are awkward about children, it doesn’t work,” she says.

There are other lessons that Santa School teaches.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Santa all the time? Does one travel in costume? Photograph: Luca Bruno/AP

The Santa look



It’s not a Wall Street suit, but it may as well be. Santa’s suit and accessories can cost anywhere from few hundred dollars to well over $1,000. Most Santas provide their own uniform, so the start-up costs of being a professional Santa can rack up pretty quickly.

There is more to Santa than just a red suit, says Andrews. While the uniform is important and the school sells variety of suits – from casual to traveling Santa suit – it’s his beard that is one of his most recognizable characteristics.

There is a lot that goes into proper beard care, Andrews says.



Most Santas have to bleach their beards. Sometimes they are quite white but there are little black strands through them. You want to bleach those out. It has to be done professionally with a high-peroxide-volume bleach and then they have to be toned afterwards and sometimes they have to be bleached several times and toned several times so that you don’t get that yellowish appearance. Then we want them to have their beard trimmed and kept well. They have to wash and condition their beard every single day. Some Santas shape their beards and blow-dry them. Some of them will curl them. Depends on the type of beard they have.”

Most importantly, no aspiring Claus can be a smoker, says Andrews. Otherwise, his beard will smell.

What does Santa smell like?



The olfactory side of Santa can never be ignored. One of the other lessons that wannabe Santas have to learn at Santa School focuses on oral hygiene.

“Santa has to speak very closely to a lot of people so we want to make sure he is never off-putting. We want him to smell like candy canes and peppermint and Christmas trees and nothing other than that,” explains Andrews.

All it takes is a cinnamon or mint-flavoured breath freshener.

Is there a Christmas-flavoured deodorant? Andrews isn’t sure, but “there is a lot of soap that’s Christmas scented,” she says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yes, some Santas travel with reindeer, says Andrews. Photograph: ILYA NAYMUSHIN/REUTERS

What does Santa sound like?



A rookie mistake for new Santas: relying too much on their looks. This especially happens to the round, jolly, apple-cheeked Santas who look a lot like the original Claus.

“Their mistake is that they don’t rely enough on practice and on working out what their character is and to polish that,” says Andrews.

Aspiring Santas should practice their ho-ho-ho’s all the time, “because a ho-ho-ho is Santa’s laugh,” she adds. They should also practice answering hard questions that Santa is likely to get from the children that interact with him.

Here are the type of questions that Santas should be prepared for, according to Andrews:

Lots of times children will ask for their dad to come to home or they will ask for their dad to get a job again. Sometimes they have a loved one who has passed away and they want Santa to bring them back. And then sometimes it’s just easy as asking if he is the real Santa.”

So how would Santa respond to a wish like: ‘I want my dad to find a job’?

We don’t want Santa to be unrealistic. Obviously, we don’t want him to give children hopes and expectation that they will be let down from. We don’t want to make it worse than it is. But sometimes what these children need is a listening ear from somebody they know is always in their corner. We want Santa to be empathetic, to be a good listener and to say: “You know what, Santa wants that, too. I’ll hope with you that that can happen. Do you like surprises for Christmas? What can Santa bring you?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest What, no cookies and milk? Photograph: Jim Holden / Alamy/Alamy

How does Santa move?



A good Santa has one major trick up his sleeve: he knows how to burst in.

“We make sure that they recognize how important it is to have a grand entrance and a grand exit so that when they enter a party or a function they are recognized the way Santa would be recognized,” says Andrews. “When there is a house party, Santa doesn’t knock. We make sure that he really acts the way Santa would act. He just comes in and announces himself.”

Santa School doesn’t focus on training Santas on how to slide down the chimney, the preferred form of entrance for Santa, as all Santas have “an innate ability to go through chimneys”, says Andrews. “There is no such a thing as a Santa who is afraid of heights,” she adds.

There is also eating like Santa:

Santa has a good balanced diet at the north pole. Of course, Mrs Claus sees to it that he eats his vegetables and fruit and he eats from all of the food groups. But when it’s Christmas Eve, the thing that really fuels him is children’s cookies and milk, and sometimes he likes to have a mandarin orange – and he really appreciates it when children leave carrots and celery sticks for the reindeer.”

Only when one has smelled like Santa, spoken like Santa, traveled like Santa and eaten like Santa can he graduate from Santa School and go forth into the malls of the world.

