Santas Fight Uphill Battle Against Sorrow in the Season to Be Jolly

SAN DIEGO —  Most of the time, he can handle what the young ones say. At times, however, seemingly childish remarks put a lump in the throat and he has to fight back the tears. But he must put aside “those feelings” to be able to go on.

“The toughest thing about being Santa Claus is having a 3-year-old say he wants nothing but peace, love and a happy family,” said William Keel, 43, an unemployed former shipbuilder who “Santas” at Horton Plaza. “I know right away what he means--his family isn’t happy. Somehow, some way, he wants Santa to stop the fighting.”

It isn’t easy being Santa in an age of divorce and terrorism, said Ken Johnson, a burly Navy man who has acted the role for 18 years. But in such an age, Santa is more important than ever.

Santa Claus is needed, he said, to give children hope. In many cases he sees children with parents no longer married. Or they have no parents. Or their parents abuse them. They look to Santa as a marshal against fear and injustice. They really believe he can do something.

Rude forces dog them inside their houses or shadow them outside the door. Johnson and other Santas lament the crush of “war toys” that seem to multiply like crazed rabbits year after year. It’s getting harder to play Santa, but “it’s never been more necessary,” he said.

The men behind the suits are quite human themselves. Some smoke. Some are divorced. Keel has a lawsuit pending against the National Steel & Shipbuilding Co. over a disability dispute. He hurt his back; he has had two operations.

All the Santas are big. Most say they would like to lose weight. Keel is over 6 feet tall and weighs 245 pounds. Johnson is 6-foot-1, 235. At one time, he weighed 315. David Dawson, 59, a Santa for 18 years--this year at Grossmont Center in La Mesa--is 6-foot-1, 275.

Johnson, who dons a suit at Mission Valley Shopping Center, said some of the best Santas are Jewish men who neither celebrate Christmas nor believe in Jesus.

Religion, he said, is incidental.

“Santa Claus doesn’t have to be a Christian,” he said. “Santa Claus is a frame of mind--a way we see the world. In the military, I was trained my whole life to go to war. I served in Vietnam. So you see why I need this--this is my sanity trip in an insane world.”

Johnson, 39, has learned “the hard way” not to refer to mom and dad collectively. More often than not, he said, mom and dad are divorced, and “the kiddo is just struggling to keep it together.”

“So many kids ask for Daddy to come home,” he said. “Either he and mom are divorced, or he’s stuck in the Indian Ocean on an aircraft carrier. Sometimes, it’s more than I can bear. But I bear it, because it’s the happiest thing I do. Even with the sadness, it’s wonderful. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

On a drizzly morning at Grossmont Center, tiny children climbed into the lap of David Dawson. Their looks were tentative, their motions hesitant. If it can be possible to be tentative and hesitant, and still be eager and wildly excited, these kids were. They had the look of Dorothy waiting to see the Wizard.

Dawson knows that’s how they feel, and he says it’s part of the thrill of being a Santa.

A girl named Melissa seemed spellbound by Dawson’s beard, which is real--he started growing it in 1969. Skeptical kids who tug at it, expecting a phony, sometimes believe in Santa Claus into their college years. At least, that’s what he thinks, Dawson says. Their looks tell him “they believe. “

Melissa meekly requested “a stroller, a wedding dress and a baby to go with both.” Dawson visibly resisted laughing.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said, patting her leg.

The next girl was more a creature of the times--she wanted a skateboard and a remote-control car.

The next child--a boy--was cautious, nervous, circumspect.

A red-haired boy with glasses and a patch over one eye--designed to strengthen the weak eye, his mother said--wanted a motorized dump truck.

Willie, the next boy, stared pensively into Dawson’s beard as though Santa were a refugee from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” He wanted a motorcycle.

Dawson sees a dizzying array of faces and names and requests for a multitude of high-tech and traditional toys. Sometimes, though, something unexpected cuts through the otherwise routine. Many kids will say they’re sitting on his lap for Hanukkah, not Christmas.

One year, he was entertaining a group of American Airlines employees--his former co-workers for 28 years--when another Santa seemed to pop out of nowhere. Small children were screaming about two being present, when Dawson somehow escaped beyond a bathroom door.

“What do you know,” one boy said. “He goes to the bathroom.”

Large as he is, it’s moments like these that keep Santa on his toes, Dawson says. It can also make the job fun, amid the realities of modern life.

The biggest change Dawson notices nowadays is how concerned kids are.

“They’re real worried,” he said. “Many say, ‘You don’t have to bring toys to me. Just feed the poor people in Africa.’ ”

At the same time, many kids want toys that serve as barometers for something else graphically demonstrated on television--violence. That concerns Dawson.

“Some kids only want guns and gruesome war toys,” he said. “I wish we could get away from all this war once in a while. That seems to be all we think about anymore--somebody wanting to maim or kill. I try to coach some of the kids against this stuff, simply because I think it is so awful.”

Santa also wards off fear and skepticism generated against him , though each of those comes with the job and is as whiskered as the old man himself.

“Between 1 and 2,” Keel said, “somebody flips a switch, and the kid is terrified of sitting in Santa’s lap. Then at 2, the switch goes back off, and everything’s fine.”

Johnson uses slow-moving, subtle body language to calm a fearful child. If a kid acts scared, he holds jostling and chatter to a ho-ho-ho minimum. If the situation gets intolerable--if the kid kicks and screams--he hands the child over to the parent and says try again next year.

Even then, some parents push hard. Even with a child screaming in fear, they demand that a photograph be taken, that the child endure for their sake.

That worries--and angers--Johnson. On occasion, he snaps at parents. But no experience was worse than the time a young girl passed out on his lap.

“This 3 1/2-year-old kid was scared to death,” he said. “She was screaming, bucking, and suddenly, no movement. She fainted.”

Johnson leaned forward in his chair. A blustery, incredulous look creased his face.

“Do you realize even then the mother wanted the picture--with the girl passed out on my lap!”

The mother resisted a call to paramedics until after the picture was taken.

Every Santa gets the skeptical kid who’s a bit old for the whole thing anyway, one who insists on pulling the beard down. What’s sad to Johnson are the kids who lose their belief prematurely.

“It depends on the parent,” he said. “The average age for losing it these days is 8 or 9. Some lose it as early as 6, and that’s really sad. There’s nothing wrong with having a mystical-type person in your life until well past 9.

“These days, Santa takes a beating from GI Joe and Rambo and all that other crap. Now the guy that wins is the one that kicks the other one just a little bit harder. Kids the last few years are definitely more aggressive, and so are their parents. The problem is, the kids are gonna be taking that attitude into adulthood, and that affects everybody.”

One year, Johnson tricked his 7-year-old son into believing in Santa another year or two. (His two children are now 16 and 12, and he and their mother are happily married.) The son strongly suspected that Dad was Santa Claus--as a smart boy, he had figured that out. So, his dad did the obvious. He got another guy to walk into the house one night, dressed as Santa.

For a man who’s unemployed (and divorced), Keel can’t wait for Christmas to roll around each year. He makes $6 an hour but can make even more going into homes dressed as Santa. For that, he has earned as much as $75 an hour.

Dawson and Johnson say they would do it for free--and have. Dawson (who’s also married, with two children, but, he says sadly, no grandchildren) talked of handicapped kids who make guttural sounds or speak only in sign language.

Johnson has spent several years seeing handicapped kids at Sharp Memorial Hospital. Some are in iron lungs. Some will lie in “day beds” the rest of their lives. He cried when mentioning one girl who spoke with Santa and then died a week later.

Poor kids tug at his heartstrings more than rich kids.

“It’s the dirty little ragamuffins who climb in your lap wearing cut-up jeans--the ones who believe you’re just everything,” he said.

Johnson takes a monthlong leave every year to carry out his Santa sanity trip. Still, every year it gets harder. It isn’t the tender feelings that give pause--it’s age, and his own exhaustion.

“I take no breaks during a six-hour shift,” he said. “I owe the kids my stamina. It’s getting to the point where I may have to start taking a break . . . but I won’t.

“If I get to that point, I’m just gonna hang up my jingle bells.”