Will the Real Father Christmas Please Stand Up: A Real Santa's Diary

By Roger S. Trevor

SUMMARY
Will The Real Father Christmas Please Stand Up

The author enjoyed several years as a professional Father Christmas in a major capital city department store. During those years, he meticulously recorded details of the best of hundreds of visits he had to the infamous Santa den. He was prompted by his employment agency to publish these records, but it has taken him 15 years to do so. Now, for the first time, he is presenting the public with a unique record of many of those intimate events in his own inimitable style and laced with some philosophy about attitudes towards Father Christmas. The book delivers nothing but true events and leads the reader through every stage of a Christmas season, but presenting them in an interesting personality format, rather than a straight diarised version. The humour, sadness, delight and despair are all here in this one true record of Santa interviews and the reader will undoubtedly recognise themselves somewhere in the pages, whether it really is them or not.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479708161

Roger S. Trevor

Author’s Autobiography Roger S. Trevor Roger was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1935, but at 15, his family moved to the Eyre Peninsula town of Port Lincoln, where he lived for most of his life, returning to Adelaide in the 1980‘s as the State’s Program Director for Australia‘s bicentennial celebrations in 1988. During his years in Port Lincoln, Roger became involved in everything active, from tennis and yachting, orienteering and going away snow skiing, to arts and amateur acting, but his forte was in planning and organising visits of celebrities, VIP’s and Naval vessels from around the world, as well as chairing a number of local organisations. This expertise brought him back to Adelaide and the Bicentenary planning, but his love of the English language and of the value of putting it down on paper no doubt prompted him to report these events and the many other documents required by his Council in great detail and probably gave him the initial motivation to keep a meticulous diary of his Santa experience. He is continuing that pleasure by writing of a fascinating life of unique activities and encounters, which he says have far from finished. He hopes he’ll stop long enough to complete his autobiography, before it’s too late. Roger married in 1961 and acknowledges his wife Patsy’s motivating presence and that of his two daughters, Roxanne and Angela, both of whom live within 20 minutes from his retirement home at Marino, on Adelaide’s southern suburb coastline.

Book preview

The Diary of a

REAL Father Christmas

Copyright © 2012 by Roger S. Trevor. 502304-TREV

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4797-0815-4

ISBN:   eBook        978-1-4797-0816-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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502304-TREV-PBint-LSI.pdf

Contents

Introduction

THE Santa Season

In The Beginning

Photogenic or not!

Emotional Encounters

Cosmopolitan Kaleidoscope

Doubts, Disbelief and Detractors

The Season Builds Up

To The End of Another Santa Season!

Christmas Day

Introduction

Why is it that, the moment children are old enough—usually at that constant questioning agethey have to be told that Father Christmas is not real? It’s as if adults just can’t wait to smash the fantasy of a child’s major source of joy and happiness at Christmas time.

And isn’t fantasy an adult realm also? If not, it should be. Walt Disney thought it was!

I’ve been a professional Father Christmas and, let me tell you, I’m as real as the next man. Oh, and by the way, ‘Father’ is a man, not a woman. Mother is a woman.

Just a point of clarification, folks!

005_a_xmas.tif

So, a real Father Christmas has no doubts about his role and plays it out with genuine belief and understanding. He will most likely have taken part in a proper training school before appearing as Santa in front of an overawed toddler. And he will gain endless, uninhibited joy from

his experiences.

Kids, if you’re reading this, don’t let those oldies put you off. A real Santa is as real as your imagination—and that’s usually pretty big. And next time you’re with him, ask him if he’s real and I’ll bet he says Yes! Try pinching him and I’ll bet he says Ouch!

Let me tell you about my first participation in the real

Santa experience.

I had seen an advertisement in the newspaper calling for people interested in becoming a real Father Christmas and so, with urging from my wife, I made an appointment with Samantha at her office in the city, to see if I

was suitable.

In Santa terms, I was as ‘skinny as a rake’, but she said I had delightful, dancing blue eyes and a lovely sense of humour. I won’t let on she also said I had a ‘cute bottom’. Subject to a police check, you’re in she announced.

I arrive a few minutes late at the appointed conference room, to find it filled with mostly portly old and some not-so-old gents chatting animatedly amongst themselves and obviously in—dare I say it—a jolly mood. I immediately join a small group and make myself known. We chat on until Sam calls us to order and the lesson begins.

So here I am, with about sixty other gentlemen of similar age and sensibility, waiting to find out what or who a real Father Christmas is and whether I really can be one.

The training is rigorous. There are many things our real Gentleman can or must do, but there are just as many or more that he cannot do. Not all children are the same we learn, and not all children can be treated in the same way. Far from it.

How do you treat a child who doesn’t believe in Father Christmas?

Heaven forbid! rightly shouts one of our number.

What about disabled, whether physically or mentally, or perhaps deaf? Yes, over time I have them all. But that’s for later.

What toys are in this year? An expert from a major toy department brings us up to speed on this point each Christmastime. Oh yes, we do this every year. What about different religious beliefs? No, they’re not all Christians.

Eventually, after hours of careful tuition, we are all ready for the big, inevitable moment. ‘Gowning up.’ No, not GROW-ing up, GOWN-ing up!

Ah! Now you might think it wouldn’t require anyone to tell you how to put on a costume. Well, that’s why this is not just a game. It’s for real. Detailed instructions provide the foundation work for this major rebuild, which makes our subsequent transformation, both now and in the future, absolutely invaluable.

It’s time to robe. Down to the jocks and a total rebuild. The walls of this body restructure have to be really thick, albeit soft. For me, that means plenty of padding for starters, but everyone needs some of it. Trousers, boots, jacket, belt are the fixtures and fittings. Then comes the neck-up-bit, the ceiling and roof. That’s when the real transformation takes place. No longer am I me. I am—?

It takes well over an hour for the first attempt, an effort that will reduce to about 20 minutes before the real event begins.

Finally, we are all robed and ready to file back into the conference room for a minute inspection and correction if necessary. As we all look around at each other, the most amazing thing is obvious. No longer are we the person we arrived as. We not only look different, we feel different. But we all look the same. And we all feel the same.

So when Sam looks around at us, it is not surprising that she says facetiously to the group, Would the real Father Christmas please stand up? And I do. All 60 of me!

THE

Santa Season

So, this is my Santa diary, reduced for the reader’s benefit from several years of activity in a major city department store into a kaleidoscope of days before Christmas. Days and events have been regrouped, but this in no way alters what is a factual diary of those events. Except where greater diplomacy demands, I have used the real names of my visitors, since, as I write, the events are more than ten years past and those concerned are unlikely to recognise who I’m referring to. If they do recognise themselves I hope it is with affectionate delight. I loved every one of them and most of their charges, parent or otherwise, and would like to think the feeling is mutual. After all, one of the characters in this story could even be you, or your child, or maybe your grandchild? That is why I believe that, as fun-loving, jovial and happy as Santa Claus should be, the role should always