The Santa clause: what makes a good Father Christmas
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Keith Stubley really doesn’t want you to notice the line of glue bonding his big white beard to his face, but it’s an occupational necessity. “Kids tug on my beard all the time,” he laughs. “Sometimes, you know, quite hard.” Ouch.
Apart from the small feat of engineering getting his beard and wig just so, there isn’t too much else that’s fake – think extra padding – about Stubley’s Santa costume. “Let’s just say I’m the right shape for the job,” says the 55-year-old, who has been donning the heavy red suit at Melbourne’s David Jones every December since 1988.
Despite occasional pee
soakings and the new era of stealth selfies, in-store Santa Keith Stubley keeps smiling. Credit:Kristoffer Paulsen
His small, inquisitive clients have asked him all the big Santa questions over the years, covering time management (“How do you and the reindeer reach all the world’s kids?”), town planning (“How do you get into apartments 20 storeys up with no chimneys?”) and special dietary needs (“Do you like milk or beer, cookies or Christmas cake?”) Stubley has learnt to keep smiling and waving even while he’s being peed on and vomited on – the discipline of three decades in professional musical theatre sure comes in handy – but he says that every Santa shift offers him moments of pure joy. “I look forward to doing this every year.”
Before the rise of the smartphone, before the time of cheap, omnipresent cameras and instant photography, the annual pilgrimage to a department store with your mum to have your photo taken on Santa’s lap helped chronicle countless infant lives in Australia. I have barely any photos of myself as a toddler, apart from a series of perfectly lit, glossy black-and-white photos taken on Santa’s lap, in which the full gamut of human emotions takes centre stage (from howling tears at age two, unbridled joy at three, a Cheshire cat grin at four, to a rather smug smile at five). Who doesn’t love Santa?
These days, of course, you get your photo on the spot, which doesn’t stop cheeky youngsters from trying to grab a free selfie with Santa, says Stubley. As a sign of the times, he also has canines perched in his lap as part of Santa Paws. What did they say about not working with kids or animals?
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Article source: http://smh.com.au/act-news/police-investigating-apartment-fire-in-lyneham-20170126-gtz3a4.html
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