When dozens of Father Christmas look-a-likes fly to a Santa convention in Branson, Mo., by airplane instead of reindeer, the kids on board might need an explanation.
They are Subordinate Clauses and carriers of goodwill who meet with children and appear at events throughout the holidays, occasionally substituting for Santa Claus.
To the confused kids en route to the conference, they shared a secret: one Santa Claus was real. The rest were his helpers. Not pretenders, but real representatives, clarifies Patrick Cunningham, a Santa Claus on board that summer day about seven years ago.
For these men, there is no tiring of the holiday season, even surrounded by sunshine and cacti. To be a Subordinate Claus means to channel the gracious spirit of Christmas all year.
No one ever said Santa Claus got time off.
SUITING UP
Bubba Schwartz, a Camp Pendleton Marine during his 20s, still marches to a mental cadence when he enters a room in uniform.
It boosts his confidence and adds snap to his steps. That comes in handy considering the uniform he wears now — red suit, cap and charcoal boots.
“Santa is a vigorous guy,” Schwartz, 60, says. “He’s got to ho-ho-ho and move through the room and carry the toys, so as long as I have that vigor that represents Santa, I’m just coming into the very best years of what I’m going to call my career. I am a professional Santa.”
Although Schwartz got his first gig as a Subordinate Claus at a Marine Corps holiday party, that festive identity goes even further back.
He remembers watching his own dad suit up to visit one-room schools in rural Sleepy Eye, Minn. As an 8-year-old, the knee-high boots swallowed Schwartz’s legs, and the beard and wig engulfed his face. Schwartz would dress up whenever possible, and eventually, the suit gravitated into his own closet.
“I gotta admit ... I was in there kissing girls as Santa,” he says of his costumed trips to local pubs as a young man. “I smooched every good looking gal in those pubs.”
Still, even amongst friends, he recognized the history that accompanies the iconic figure.
“Even as a fruit-loopy Santa, you’re one of the most revered cultural traditions on the planet,” Schwartz says. “Everyone knows who Santa is.”
So he proudly stepped in to fill those boots, first for the Marine Corps, and later when his daughter’s preschool invited him to represent Santa Claus — she never realized she was sitting on Dad’s lap.
Since those early appearances, Schwartz has visited with thousands of children, picking their brains about Christmas lists and chores. Some children adore him. Others fold their arms and scrunch their eyebrows, in the throes of skepticism.
Schwartz loves winning those children back for another Christmas, naughty or nice. They tug on his beard, natural now, and gasp in delight when he asks them personal questions, tipped off by his elves on the home front: parents.
Schwartz’s holiday hobby became more of a focus when he moved to Tucson in his 40s. He started taking paid jobs, and in his 50s, spent three years appearing as Santa Claus in malls around the country. He calls the mall circuit a “demeaning, commercial cash grab” and returned to Tucson full-time to escape.
In the Old Pueblo, Schwartz makes appearances at parties, homes and local events such as the tree lighting ceremony at Oro Valley Marketplace.
He has also appeared as Santa Claus at events for the Hilton El Conquistador Golf & Tennis Resort. He looks the part. He owns two, custom-made Santa suits that cost more than $1,000 each. The resort even lets him skirt grooming standards to maintain his bushy beard while he is on the job year-round as a destination services driver.
“There are four stages of life,” Schwartz says. “First, you believe in Santa Claus. Then, you don’t believe in Santa Claus. Then, you are Santa Claus. Then, you start to look like Santa Claus, and that’s where I’m at right now.”
CARRYING GOOD WILL
Santa Claus roots for the Arizona Wildcats — wearing red comes naturally to him.
Patrick Cunningham carries sleigh bells to the football games, wearing a personalized UA jersey and billed Santa cap. While Arizona fans shake their keys before a kick, he rings his jingle bells.
To Cunningham, Santa Claus embodies the best of the human spirit.
“Wherever there’s an opportunity anywhere in the world … to be compassionate, to be good, to be kind, that is the spirit of Santa,” he says.
His joy — he hesitates to call it a job — as a carrier of good will drops him in the midst of Tucson celebrations every winter. He meets with children in an old sleigh at Main Gate Square on University Boulevard and also indulges college students who want a nostalgic or goofy photo with Santa.
At the start of the JW Marriott Tucson Starr Pass Resort & Spa’s Winter Wonderland weekend, Cunningham, 59, ditches the sleigh for snazzier transportation. He makes his entrance via helicopter, greeted by elves as hotel guests lean over balconies, waving and cheering.
“It’s as close as a man will ever have to knowing what it’s like to be Miss America,” he says. “As I step onto the runway, the ground-level fireworks are shooting in the air, and cameras are flashing like the paparazzi.”
Despite this celebrity status, he does not revel in the hoopla. He wears Santa’s suit for the moments when heartbreak and hope collide.
He’s been there.
As a graduate student in his late 20s at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., Cunningham faced Christmas one year with only a jar of mustard in his refrigerator.
Not knowing what else to do, he checked the mail, rifling through a stack of Christmas cards. A $50 bill fluttered from one of those cards.
Without ever having donned a Santa suit, he embraced the gracious attitude of the season.
His debut as Kris Kringle happened on a whim at the Claypool (Ariz.) United Methodist Church’s Christmas Eve pageant. An organizer of the evening, Cunningham stepped into a back room and spotted a Santa suit on a hanger. He decided a wardrobe change was in order.
When shocked church leaders asked him to help hand out the gifts to underprivileged kids at the end of the evening, he did not hesitate.
“As I heard the squealing and saw the tears in their eyes as they opened the presents … it was a transforming experience of a heart both breaking and being full at the same time,” he says.
As a hospice chaplain, he understands the holidays can be filled with conflicting emotions. This year, for the first time, he visited about a dozen hospice patients in his Santa suit. They laughed, cried and prayed — moments of levity interrupting days consumed with impending death.
Cunningham lost his own mother on Christmas Day about 20 years ago.
“Every Christmas, with all the laughter and all the stories, there always is a river of melancholy that runs through my life and through my Christmas about my mom having died on Christmas Day,” he says.
He now wears Santa’s suit in her honor. His mother was a teacher who mentored and loved children, and now he does the same, both as a holiday icon and with his four grown children and his 8-year-old daughter, Molly. To her, Cunningham is both Santa Claus and dad.
“I believe that a person needs just one person to believe in them, whether it’s Santa or a mom or a dad or a friend,” he says. “I believe that each person coming to me is seeking the same thing I am, which is some inspiration and some hope.”
