Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

To the store, actually.

This year the honour of frightening little children fell to me, and today was the day. They found last year's Santa suit upstairs and aired it out a bit, and then they dressed me up.
Red pants, black boots (which are actually only fake-boot-like-things that go over your own shoes, in my case: blue Adidas sneakers), red jacket, white gloves, black belt, white wig, white beard, 3 bells on a string. And a Santa hat.

I'm not really fat enough, so they stuffed me with a pillow AND a blanket. Nice and warm.

I wasn't aware of how big a tradition this really is in this country. Mothers basically outran each other to thrust their small defenseless children into Santa's lap just to take photograph. All I had to do was say: HO HO HO and jingle my bells a bit while noticing how long the line-up of children was.
Some children had long lists of wishes: a batman toy... and a joker toy... How about a batmobile, I suggested. Yes. And a spiderman suit.
Some children didn't know what to wish for.
Other children really didn't want to be there, so they squirmed and yelled and screamed, to the delight of their mothers, who stood nearby taking pictures of these memorable moments.
Some children were actually adults, one woman said she'd been naughty, and she whished for a man. Another woman said she'd been nice, and she wished for tall man with dark hair.

Most children mumbled. No really, they were really hard to understand.
What's your name? Mmmbvlele. Ah, ok. And what would you like for Christmas? Uhhmm mmmbllbe. Well, we'll see what Santa can do! Smile now! And off you go!

The whole time I felt very insecure about my Santa performance. Jingling bells and saying HO HO HO isn't really much to base a character-performance on. I felt like people were seeing right through me, as if they knew I was not the real thing.

No really, everybody talks like this at the Northpole.

The children seemed convinced enough, tough. What I saw in their eyes was real fear.

I also understand now why they put Santa high up or somehow a bit away from the line-up. It's to prevent the waiting children from hearing that Santa says the same things to every single kid. This way they also can't hear Santa's frequent complaints about how fucking hot it is, and what fucking time it is, and how fucking uncomfortable the fucking beard is, and how the strap is digging into Santa's scalp.
Not that I voiced any of these thoughts.
But I thought them.
Often.

Altogether a quite interesting experience.