Things are crazy around the mall during Christmas time, and they get even crazier when you can count the number of shopping days left without having to unzip your pants. (i.e. - less than ten days for those who geniuses and don't have to count things out on your fingers or for those of a gender that unzipping your pants doesn't not help) That's the time frame for this story. I believe it was the last Saturday before Christmas and the mall was staying open until midnight. Ok

The shopping days are dwindling, Jack Frost is nipping right along, and credit card CEOs are grinning. Yep, we're smack in the middle of Christmas season so here is a new edition of my Santa tales. I'm the kind of guy who tries to have fun regardless of the situation. You can call it what you will - finding the silver lining, making lemonade out of lemons, believing there might be a diamond inside that lump of coal in my stocking. So even though playing Santa wasn't all Ho,

I don't want this blog to become All Christmas ... All the Time, but I did say I would get another Second-Rate Santa Saga up this weekend. But this will be the last one until late next week or even the weekend, because I'd hate for my readers to require insulin after too many tales of sugar plum fairies. In another couple of weeks we'll all be so sick of hearing Jingle Bells and All I Want for Christmas is a Hippopotamus that the only way to make our spirits bright is to moun

When you mention mall Santa's, most people think of kids, and probably 90% of the people who stood in line and came to sit on my lap were under the age of twelve. Then you had the older kids who hated to be there, but their parents still wanted that yearly picture so they forced them to shuffle up and plop down beside Santa in the over-sized chair. There was no way those 'tweens and teenagers were about to sit on my, or any other Santa's lap. Then there were the older people,

That's right folks, that is me lurking beneath those snow-white whiskers and red hat. And here is the story of how I became a mall Santa and happened to have a six foot plus two hundred and something pound red-headed man sitting on my lap. The year was 2001. I was just shy of my 29th birthday, far too young to make a good Santa but then again I never claimed I was a good Santa. The previous spring I'd agreed to play the Easter Bunny at the mall so the Santa gig was my secon