Sunday, Feb. 12, 2006 | 12:30 p.m.
You can't not be amused by a dozen Santas singing karaoke, even if they are slightly off-key.
A lot of folks were doing double takes Thursday night as they walked into Tequila Joe's at the Imperial Palace, home of the tribute artist production "Legends in Concert."
But it wasn't Elvis turning heads - it was the choir of Santa Clauses singing "Ring of Fire," "Oklahoma!" and "Chantilly Lace."
Almost everyone who walked through the door grinned, whipped out their cameras or cell phones and began snapping pictures.
It's the kind of attention given to only the most well-known celebrities, and who is more well known than Santa?
Tequila Joe's is a popular nightclub, where karaoke is the nightly entertainment.
Wannabe performers pay tribute to their favorite singers, but Thursday night's event was the ultimate tribute performance.
Almost two months after Christmas, Naturally Santa Inc., a company based in Colorado Springs, Colo., is hosting its annual Las Vegas convention.
More than 50 Santas - all with naturally long white beards and hair, and most wide of girth - will be in town through Sunday.
For more than 10 years the company has been coming to the Imperial Palace, where they interview prospective Santas, conduct some business and let their beards down, so to speak.
They sing and dance and cut up, but not too much. It wouldn't be good for their image. So you probably won't see a Santa at a topless club watching a pole dance - not even if its the North Pole.
A second convention is held in the fall in Colorado Springs, a boot camp for the newcomers.
"It's three days of intensive training," said 63-year-old Alma "Mama" Gooch, who, along with her husband, Billy, 69, founded the company in 1989.
"We teach them how to get better pictures - like putting their glasses down on the end of their noses so it makes the eyes look bigger, and you look over the glasses for that astonished look."
Being a believable Santa is quite an art.
"We teach them how to do makeup and fix their hair," Gooch said. "You put just enough blush on the cheeks to give a ruddy look."
Naturally Santa Inc. has adopted the "workshop Santa" look for its people.
Gooch said large men in fake beards wearing red suits can frighten children.
"Ours wear teddy bear shirts or reindeer shirts and pants that come down to the knees and red, white and green socks that come up to the knees," she said. "They make the children feel more relaxed."
The right look is important for the pictures taken with the children - pictures are profit. Gooch says one mall made $69,000 from photographs the first year it used one of the company's Santas. The year before it made a little more than $20,000.
Gooch says the picture taking is a big business for the malls, big enough so they pay all expenses for the Santas they hire through Naturally Santa - travel, lodging, car rental, laundry, beauty salons (so they can touch up their appearance periodically).
Naturally Santa supplies Santas for malls in 29 states. Last year it found work for 72 men, who range in age from 43 to 82. Between 20 and 30 new Santas come aboard each year, either to replace ones who have left or to work in additional malls that have been recruited.
Gooch says many malls prefer to hire Santas through her company because the Santas have been thoroughly checked out and are trustworthy.
"The ones that are hired off the street haven't had background checks, like ours have had," she said. "I have three big rules - no drinking, no smoking and no womanizing. I've very strict about that. Our Santas have to be squeaky-clean."
They come from all walks of life. Most are retirees looking for an extra income. Some hold jobs that allow them to take several weeks off during the Christmas holidays to work at a job that they all do for love and not money.
"The ones we hire, their heart has to be where they would do it for nothing if they didn't need the money," Gooch said.
The Santas, many of whom work as many as six weeks before Christmas, are independent contractors. The company, in exchange for placing them, gets a 15 percent cut of whatever the mall pays.
Rarely does a Santa work near his home. Most are placed several states away.
"The motto of our company is 'Believe in the Magic,'" Gooch said. The magic comes out more if the Santas don't know anyone. And the adults get into it if they don't know the Santas."
The Gooches spend most of the summer traveling the country in their motor home, looking for malls for their Santa corps.
Among those who have worked with the company the longest are Bill Miller, 62, of Pittsburg, Calif.; Jeff Townsend, 43, of Evansville, Ind.; and Joe Monaco and Jeff Ferguson, both of Colorado Springs, and both claiming to be more than 1,000 years old.
Miller was in the auto parts business before retiring last year. He was a Santa who visited hospitals and participated in charity events for 16 years before joining Naturally Santa Inc. nine years ago.
"We deal with all kinds of problems and issues," Miller said. "Santa becomes sort of a father confessor.
"I've been eating lunch, and people will sit down and start talking to me, like I'm a priest. A lot of people feel they can talk to Santa - he has a mystical power."
Townsend, at 43, is the youngest of the old-timers. He has been associated with the company for 10 years.
He went into the Santa business when he was 22. His father used to be a Santa for a florist shop, and when his father died, they asked Townsend to replace him.
"I knew Dad got a lot of joy out of it, so I accepted their offer and I was hooked," he said. "Every year I got more and more involved."
Townsend is a millwright, a trade he plies nine or 10 months of the year. The rest of the time, he is Santa.
"This year I started work a week before Thanksgiving," he said. "Some start two weeks before, some three weeks.
"We're there every day, all day, seven days a week until Christmas Eve - it's quite a commitment, but the lives you are able to touch, not only the children but the adults, makes it worthwhile."
Ferguson has been Santa for four years. In the off-season he has his own computer company and teaches information technology on-line through the University of Phoenix and the University of Maryland.
And he is on the board of directors of Magical Photo, a new company recently formed as a subsidiary of Naturally Santa Inc. The company takes pictures of the Santas with children.
"It's all pretty much for the kids," Ferguson said. "If I was in it for the money, I would be in the wrong business. I can make more with my computer company.
"You've got to like kids."
He said the last thing he says to a child when the child steps down is "You know, Santa loves you."
"They are usually surprised when Santa says that to them."
Monaco is a slim Santa.
"St. Nicholas was not fat," he said. "Coca Cola, in a 1930 ad campaign, made Santa fat."
Monaco says Santas hear a lot of things, ranging from the horribly said to the hilarious.
"This year a kid asked for a pet rattlesnake," he said.
Monaco said he and the other Santas don't merely sit in a chair and create an assembly line for picture-taking.
"We get up, we get down on the floor with the children," he said. "We read a book, we work with them to make it fun. We laugh with them. We hug them and we tell them we love them."
Billy Gooch, who was in the newspaper business (on the production side) for more than 30 years, said he first played Santa in 1961 in his hometown of Stroud, Okla.
He was first paid to be Santa in 1981 in Colorado Springs.
"I got started in schools and day cares," he said. "You get an electricity from these kids when you see the gleam in their eyes when they see Santa. It makes you feel good to be able to give something back from the heart."
It's Christmas year-round in the Gooch household - the tree and the lights never come down. There is a sleigh, built in the 1800s, in the basement where their company is located.
Gooch almost retired as Santa last year, but then he got a call from a mall in Hawaii that wanted to hire someone for about four weeks, all expenses paid.
So he and Mama Gooch spent the holidays in Hawaii.
"I couldn't find anyone else who wanted to do it," he said.
Townsend chuckled.
"I just want to say, he didn't try very hard," he said.
Jerry Fink can be reached at 259-4058 or [email protected].
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