Ben Bentley goes to a Shropshire ‘Santa School’ to find out what it takes to become a top-rate Father Christmas
There’s a tricky moment in the grotto. A kid with high hopes of a magic set and Nintendo Wii asks: “But I don’t have a chimney, Santa, how do you get into my house?”
What do you do?
Welcome to Santa School at Telford Shopping Centre, where several trainee Father Christmases and a menagerie of elves and helpers are being given a crash course on how to be the magical beings of Christmas.
We’ve had the CRB checks, now it’s back to the classroom for a bit of theory. Lesson one: how to cultivate and maintain the magic of Christmas.
For children, memories of visiting Santa are permanent and a bad Santa experience could have lasting effects. At Santa School I sit next to pupil Mark Venables who, it turns out, is an old hand at being the Big Man. But it was an ominous start. Mark, you see, was the victim of a bad Santa experience as a child and he is, perhaps, here to put things right.
“I remember going into a grotto when I was seven or eight and Father Christmas was wearing a pair of jeans, which was not very good,” he says.
Which is a bit like bumping into Elvis and finding he’s got a Brummie accent.
Santa School teacher Debbie Collins, of the company Dreamtime which runs the Telford Shopping Centre grotto, says: “We have a big responsibility to get this right because children’s memories last and we want them to walk out with happy, positive memories.
“To make that happen you have got to 100 per cent believe in what you are doing – believe in Christmas and believe in Santa. You add the magic and become the character.”
No problem. Just so long as I don’t look in the mirror because at the close of Santa School I end up looking like John Sergeant with Jimmy Savile hair and a tramp beard.
Kids can be enquiring little mites, so Santa must stay one step ahead of the game.
“If you get asked ‘Where are the reindeer, what do you say?” Around the table, hand shoot up.
“Up on the roof,” says an elf.
What are the names of the reindeer? Prancer, Dancer . . .
“Learn them,” says Debbie. “And if you forget Rudolph you should not be sitting around this table.”
“And what if an elf gets asked ‘Why are you so tall when you’re supposed to be elves.”
An eager elf is first on the draw again, answering: “It’s magic. I am normally small but while I am at this grotto I grow because I don’t want to get trodden on.”
How does Santa get round the world in one night? Magic powers and slow-down time, that’s how, stupid.
We Santas are taught diversion tactics to combat tricky questions from smart young children. In much the same way as actors research a part, what you do is create a whole back-story for your character. So, I am married (to Mrs Claus, of course, who looks after the online toy side of my operation), I support Lapland United and if a child asks me what present I gave him last year I am, conveniently, prone to bouts of memory loss.
“One child said ‘I want a Wii’ and I didn’t know what he was talking about, but this year I’m prepared,” Santa Mark Venables recalls of an experience last year.
After creating the character, it’s down to the practical: how to get the look. As the transformation into Father Christmas continues, the make-believe moves onto make-up. Mainly mine.
Debbie and her dab hands paint me up with thick white eyebrows (“I’ve got plenty to work with here,” she says commenting on my over-eye caterpillars), red nose and ruddy cheeks. She also takes a toothbrush and with it applies white paint to my temples.
Lesson two: beard care. Now the flowing silver face hair is vitally important since it is this feature that, should it slip or fail to stand up to the rigors of a hard day’s Santa-ing, will reveal you as a mere mortal. And make you look a nincompoop.
Debbie removes a fresh white beard from a packet and demonstrates the art of grooming it: a bit of backcombing, teasing and cultivating the moustache so that the beard’s mouth hole corresponds with yours.
“Some of my Santas use hairspray,” says Debbie helpfully. “One even took their beard to the hairdressers.”
And another thing – if you’re thinking of washing your beard, pop it in a pillowcase first and don’t put it on a hot wash with your big red Santa suit.
Then we’re onto role play, grotto procedure and a section on, er, ’Elf & Safety (lifting of sacks and personal behaviour included).
Needless to say there’s the fitting of a big red suit and practice to perfect the obligatory question that Mr Claus must pose to all grotto-goers: have you been a good boy (or girl), and what would you like for Christmas?
“And smile under the beard, because it shows in the eyes,” Debbie advises. And with that final lesson, the bell rings and trainee Santas graduates fly off into the magical world of Christmas, back to Lapland to finish making the toys.
Santa School’s out. See me next at a grotto near you and later as I soar across the night sky (trade secret, I’m afraid).
Oh, and the answer to the tricky chimney question? Magic is the key to Santa-ing and I do, of course, have a magic key.
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