Yes, Bob, There Is A Santa Claus

Bob Rutan is legendary among the tight-knit fraternity of Macy's Santa Clauses. Like many of these men, playing Santa changed Bob. Profoundly. His story is one of struggle and failure, heartbreak and grace and—yes—the magic of Christmas.

- By David Gauvey Herbert

The neighborhood was gentrifying, and management seemed eager to accommodate—there was scented soap in the bathroom and twenty-two-dollar lobster rolls. But the place couldn't outrun the regulars. They drank tumblers of Irish whiskey filled to the brim, illicit pours they secured with ten-dollar tips to a curvy Dominican bartender.

Santa—Billy—was fiftyish, with a modest gut, gray hair, a lustrous beard, and a caddish gaze that followed the bartender up and down the rail. He was dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt. For the price of three beers, he told me his story.

As a young man, Billy had come to New York to be an actor, but over time he began to feel like an extra in his own life, watching it happen without any control over its direction, the way a person does sometimes. These were bad years, shameful even. He lost his job. He lost his wife. Lost touch with his young son too. He was overweight and undershaved. A friend had a weird idea: Billy could try playing Santa Claus at Macy’s.

And that’s what Billy did.

For the first time in years, people were glad to see Billy. The kids’ smiles weren’t for him, exactly. They weren’t for Billy, the person. They were for Santa. But somehow that didn’t matter. The gig provided a variation on exposure therapy. Instead of making him face down a phobia in short bursts, it gave him those smiles, which accumulated—some gap-toothed, some nervous, every one of them happy—until eventually they made him happy too.

He switched from vodka to light beer. He started booking two-hundred-dollar-an-hour corporate Santa gigs. He reconnected with his son and even employed him as an elf.