How to Find Your Inner Santa

1. THE SUIT MAKES SANTA. So you need a good one. It makes you look naturally real. I once saw another Santa wearing low, grubpicked by boots, and the white trim was loose. He looked like he had been out of the ranks.

2. HANG ON TO YOUR BEARD. Beard-pulling is rare, but it happens. The instance that stands out in my mind was a little girl who was probably 7 or even 8, and the family was egging her on, saying "Pull his beard! Pull his beard!" But most of the time the parents are on your side.

3. BE PREPARED FOR EVERYTHING, from Santa phobics to Santa huggers. If there are two or three children in a family, one is bound to come flying at you and you almost have to bounce them off. Shy ones will stand off a little bit, and that's fine. I would never force them to come. And when they leave, I would hold a box of candy canes in front of them. Nine times out of ten they take it.

Ruggles at work, circa 1970

4. MAKE NO PROMISES. The only promise I make is that "I will choose your Christmas gift from the list you sent me." You see, that's fairly safe. You're throwing it into the control of the parents, if they're at all on the ball, since they're usually standing only a few feet away, listening.

5. FORGET THE HO HO HOs.  I never said it. To me that's the worst thing in the world. You can be intelligent enough to carry a conversation without going "ho, ho, ho." That's what psychology class did for me, I guess.

Over the course of three decades, Ruggles played Santa Claus daily for eightmonths a year at Santa's Land U.S.A. in Putney, Vermont. He also worked as acoach and administrator at Deerfield Academy for 32 years. Ruggles hung up his heard in 1999 and now lives in Massachusetts. He majored in psychology.