One Size Really Does Fit All!

One Christmas I got to play Santa. For real!

The company where I was working had adopted a very large family off an angel tree and wanted to have a party for them and needed a Santa to pass out their gifts. Despite how shy and retiring I am, I was elected!

I invested in a regulation red Santa suit complete with toy sack, itchy beard and hair – the works! Trust me, that get-up gave hot and heavy a whole new meaning.

Oh, sure, the older kids weren’t particularly impressed by the dweeb in the costume with the runny mascara, but the little ones under five were spellbound.

“Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh” the littlest one kept saying as she alternately hid from and ran after me. She was probably three and thus had low expectations of Santa – or low enough for me to get by with it.

A few years later my husband got to wear the very same suit – proof positive the costumers meant business when they said “One Size Fits All”.

At 6’ 5”, with a natural mustache, beard, and booming bass voice, he was born for the role. He was asked to portray Saint Nick for a party at a domestic violence shelter for abused women and their children. He heard lots of sad stories that year. Good thing Santa wasn’t wearing mascara.

I haven’t seen the suit in years now. I think it got lost in one of our moves or maybe it’s up in the attic over the garage in one of those vaguely described storage boxes marked “Christmas” that gets pushed further and further back each year and never finds its way down again.

I need to find it, and an occasion to wear it again. Maybe we all should. Everyone should play Kris Kringle at least once in their lives. I know once you’ve been touched by the magic suit, well, you stay touched.

Something magical happens when you don that ensemble. Somehow you become a little bit more like the big guy himself and that makes you want to stay that way long after you take the costume off.

I suspect there's a little Santa in all of us -- Maybe we just need to let our Inner Santas out!

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Santa Claus portrayed by children's television producer Jonathan Meath