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Posted November 23, 2009
Each year for over two decades now I have donned the curly white hair and hat, glued on the beard, duct-taped on the pillows, worn my father-in-law's black boots (that have done double duty on my motorcycle trips for as many years, and for him before that), white gloves if I can find them, more recently wire rimmed glasses, a wee bit of lipstick for the cherry lips and rosy cheeks, and it is HO, HO, HO! time.
Surrounded, and at times protected by a cadre of interesting looking elves, I shake the antique sleigh bells that make exactly the right, absolutely perfect Santa's sleigh bell sound and I start the Ho Ho Ho’s. I have been Santa for the Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Chicago on tour boats, in high school gyms, in smaller restaurants packed beyond capacity, on stage, no stage - I never know what I'll find until I walk in the door. The elves are my kids and my team of toy inventors and designers, each with their own interpretation of what an elf should look like, or what they are willing to wear. Some refuse to wear tights, others, no problem. Some won’t glue on bushy white eyebrows and beards, and others get right into it and look like 500 year old elves.
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