A Peek Behind The Beard

Santa, Mrs. Claus share personal lives

Kids love Santa Claus.

It’s as simple as that.

But parents might wonder: Who is the man behind that belly (that shakes like a bowl full of jelly)?

Santa and Mrs. Claus will slide down the chimney at the Arts Center of the Ozarks Saturday for the sixth annual Breakfast With Santa. What’s Up! found the jolly old elf - his friends call him John - amidst the hubbub of his workshop and asked him to talk about his love affair with his wife, Ann Ayres Claus.

“We were assigned to the same dining table on a trans-Atlantic crossing on the SS American,” Santa remembers.

“If she says something else, of course she is right, and I am wrong, as always. Come to think of it, I seem to remember us being at the same wedding reception in Padua in the Middle Ages.”

Mrs. Claus does in fact remember it differently. She says Santa first caught her eye when he came to tend one of her reindeer, which had had a serious allergic reaction to mistletoe. “It was love at first sight for all of us,” she says.

Santa boasts that he was way ahead of FedEx in the overnight delivery business.

Then “I found that seasonal shortages of toys to deliver and my reluctance to furlough elves during the off-season made it a no-brainer to set up production lines,” he says.

Mrs. Claus had been making clothes for her collection of dolls to share with sick children, “and my hobby became an obsession,” she says. She’s still in charge of doll production for Santa’s Elves Inc.

As time passed, Santa had to branch out to keep up, adding clothing, electronics and software to his manufacturing - and coal, he adds, “particularlycoal.” While he enjoys the feedback he gets from children for some business-related reasons, Mrs. Claus just likes to chat - and of course, to explain many times during breakfast why Rudolph can’t come into the Arts Center of the Ozarks.

He is, after all, an outdoor deer.

“I hope the children - and parents - who come will enjoy the food, the activities and fun that will be all around that day,” she says. Santa says he hopes, as he always does, that the children and their families leave with “happy memories.”

Whats Up, Pages 13 on 11/30/2012

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