Ho Ho Whore!

Santa is a fat money-sucking Elf.

The Miracle on 34th Street - this

Santa need not apply today!

Back in the day a trip to the Mall Santa was an exercise in innocent hope.  Now it is merely preparatory school to the fleecing of parents.  Until the late 1980s - Mall Santas were hopelessly ersatz with fake beards, hair, and stained outfits.  Malls and large department stores brought in Santa to lure shoppers to their stores - sort of like the the 99-cent shrimp cocktail in the casino bar in Las Vegas.

In The Miracle on 34th Street - Santa was very good and probably real or crazy and flanked by sadistic elves as in A Christmas Story.  A visit to Santa was free with parents taking the snappy-flash photo and for a price - the professionals could take one for those parents who forgot their camera or had the humility to accept that their photos sucked. 

No longer.

Today Santa's have real beards - at least in the upscale malls - and the Santa seat is its own little profit generation station.  This has has come at a price of three ominous developments.

The first change I noticed was when they would not let you take your own photos of your cherubs with Santa unless you picked from the array of economical Santa packages.  The packages were ranked to the absurdly titled "economical" package of an array of sizes and shapes of photos of you loved one with the Christmas Icon.  It used to be you could get away with $12.00 but this year the cheapest we could get get was $21.00 for two 4X6 prints.  

The Santa Complex at the Cherry Creek Mall in Denver, Colorado.  The "Ice Palace" has been recycled more than cardboard - incorporating the themes of at least five different and utterly forgettable seasonal movies.  No longer a means to lure in shoppers - this Santa is a profit center in his own right.

Second,  in 2007 I noticed that the Santa Areas incorporated that season's children's movie.  Narnia.  The Polar Express.  The Golden Compass.  They transformed the whole waiting line into one large "interactive" marketing experience for the movie so that after your salivating young one had finished with Santa - you would be bombarded with requests to go to the cineplex.  This year it the whole "Ice Palace" had been transformed to hock the DVD purchase of Ice Age -Continental Drift.

Third - no longer content with conditioning personal camera on purchase of the Santa Package - now the Santa Elves forbid any use of personal cameras - even if you pay.  THe first time this happened I politely informed them to stuff it - since I was going to video the meeting with our little S and the jolly old Elf.  The Elves would have none of it and threatened to not let us through or have us escorted out.  I walked out loudly condemning them all and as a result my wife will not let me take S to Santa unless I am filming in the distance behind potted plants - like a lurker.  

Nothing in life is static, so I understand the things change - but these aren't for the better except perhaps, to prepare parents for the real money-sucking activities - like college or karate.