The Santa Express

"It's the most wonderful time of the year," Angelo says with a grin. He's hoping to gross $3 million in the Santa business this year, and the irony is he doesn't even believe in Santa. The relationship among Jesus, Jeff Angelo and Santa Claus is like the Trinity -- sort of hard to explain. Angelo says Christ and Claus are not the same, though there are similarities. He agrees they both offer rewards for good behavior, but he points out that Jesus also performed miracles. If not a miracle, though, what would you call Santa's one-night global gift trip? Angelo believes that Jesus is real -- but then, he has never actually seen Jesus.

"One thing I can tell you," says Angelo, finally, "when you feel the love of Jesus Christ, you know he's there." And the kids in the mall probably said the same thing about Santa.

During training, other Santas looked in awe at John Bell. They envied his size, his face, his beard. "I like his boots, too," one of them said. Jeff Angelo said Bell was a true "Coca-Cola Santa" and "smart as a whip." If you want to talk to a good Santa, talk to him, said Angelo. "That guy's cool."

Bell was 55 years old, a Vietnam veteran ("we won't talk about that"), a boilermaker who had become an intensive-care nurse. He wore a shirt that read, "Be naughty, save Santa a trip." He emphasized that he was from Santa Fe. He said a man's life could be divided into three stages: the time that he believes in Santa Claus, the time that he doesn't, and then, the time that he becomes Santa Claus.

"Because of girth, hair color and pigmentation," said Bell, "I have accidentally or by design been led to being Santa Claus." For many years he was just another large man, and then the friends of his children began whispering about him. Then kids began shrieking when they saw him. Then artists wanted to paint him.

In his first charity role, Santa Bell wore an artificial beard, plastic boot covers and a corduroy red coat "with skimpy fur." The experience was among the greatest of his life. The next year he grew a natural beard, a reddish-brown one that he had to bleach. That was the last time he used bleach, for a year later, he said, "some entity decided the beard should be white, and it began coming in that way, as did the hair."

He fell deeper and deeper into character. Aware that he was being watched, he rectified his behavior -- tried not to cuss, or lose his temper. Bell researched Santa's history at the library. He began keeping up with what's selling at Toys R Us and started watching cartoons ("I need to know what the characters of Cow and Chicken do").

During the holidays, Bell began wearing red scrubs to the hospital. He created a long scroll of the names of good girls and boys on which Perfecta would find herself, as would Pasqual, Lasheba and Lexi. In the parking lot outside his condominium, he spent weeks building himself a magnificent golden throne, flanked by giant metal candy canes that he fashioned from diesel tailpipe. The drawer below was for the real candy canes -- six different flavors, including bubble gum.

Santa Bell planned to make a sleigh and was trying to persuade his three grown sons to pose as reindeer. (He was going to raise a few reindeer until he realized their antlers fall off in November). No one in the family is laughing about this. Children believe in Santa Bell, and the Bells are all keepers of the trust. His daughter has stood by him as an elf, his wife, Sue, as Mrs. Claus. For "true believers" they may encounter, his wife carries candy canes in her purse wherever they go.

"This is something we take pretty seriously," she says.

Bell explains that he became Santa Claus for the same selfish reason he became a nurse: the feeling he derived from it. Every year a new generation of children reaches the age of belief. Tens of hundreds of thousands of children suddenly realize that Santa loves them, and they suddenly love John Bell.

He is moved to love them in return. When he is Santa Claus, Bell feels better about himself. He feels he's atoning for past mistakes. He doesn't fly into a rage at the traffic. A sense of joy and peace overwhelms him.

"I'm not seeking salvation as Santa," he says, "but what I'm getting comes from a higher source, and it's not Jeff, and it's not Sepia, and I don't think I can be crazy enough to feel this without it really happening."