In the nick of time, it's again time for St. Nick

TROXLER E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 7, 2001

Santa Claus arrives at 6:30 p.m. this evening at Tyrone Square Mall in St. Petersburg.

That's right. Santa Claus. Christmas.

Ho.

He'll ride up in the parking lot in a fire truck of the St. Petersburg Fire Department. He'll be greeted by the Pinellas Park High School marching band.

Santa's stay at Tyrone Square this year will feature a stars and stripes theme. There'll be a bunch of booths, and games, and carnival stuff, and balloon sculpture, and face-painting.

Today, for the record, is Nov. 7.

"It just seems earlier this year," Dawn Richter reassured me. She is Tyrone Square's marketing director. Santa has arrived at the mall the first Wednesday or Thursday in November for the past three years, she said.

Sounding pretty much like an old guy, I told her that the Christmas season used to start no earlier than the day after Thanksgiving. Richter, whose 30th birthday was last week, said something like, mm-hmm, which is what I used to say to people when they were telling me how things used to be.

There is no doubt that Santa is coming earlier these days. Let's call the phenomenon "Santa-creep." As recently as 1997, the first mall Santa of the Tampa Bay area arrived a full week later, on Nov. 15 -- again, at Tyrone Square -- to the raised eyebrows and veiled criticism of jealous rivals.

Consider this: Had Santa arrived just a few days earlier this year, he would have started hearing children's Christmas wishes even before the World Series was over.

After his debut at Tyrone, a full 10 days elapse before Santa appears elsewhere. The rest of the area's malls I checked have him showing up between Nov. 17 and Nov. 23, the day after Thanksgiving.

At ParkSide in Pinellas Park, which has an ice rink, Santa will ride in on a Zamboni. At WestShore Plaza in Tampa, Santa's arrival kicks off a winter carnival, complete with what is being billed as a "real" snow flurry. If they can arrange that, instead of blowing frozen water out of a machine, that will be impressive.

Even in more "normal" years, the pressure is on shopping malls to produce earlier Santas. A big chunk of a mall's sales comes in November and December. According to a thorough article by our reporter Kathryn Wexler, whom I now consider an authority on the Santa thing, an average mall Santa holds 18,000 children on his lap over a single Christmas season. Also on average, each mall hires 1.1 full-time Santa Clauses -- whoops, I mean, "helpers," of course -- and two part-timers.

Certainly, part of the tradition of our modern Christmas season is decrying its early arrival. All of the things that can be said are obvious. The true meaning of the holiday already is lost in commercialism. To dilute it further over a two-month holiday "season" threatens to make the whole thing almost meaningless. It becomes a gimme-fest.

Yet Dawn Richter does have a point.

If the early Santa seems even earlier this year, it's because we've been, you know, preoccupied until just about right now.

Sept. 11 was only an instant in time ago. Do you remember watching the TV images over and over? Can you believe that was almost two months ago? So as months go, the rest of that one was pretty much shot. Then we spent October worried about an overseas war, and scary domestic threats. Then came Halloween, and don't-go-to-the-mall rumors, and fears over candy, and all of that, and even though we grown-ups know better, still we worried, and looked up when we heard something in the sky.

Suddenly it is November. And there, just about the same time as last year, at least according to Tyrone Square Mall, is Santa Claus, ushered in by the Fire Department and the marching band of a high school nicknamed, not coincidentally, the Patriots. My intent here is not to endorse crass commercialism, nor unwise spending, nor materialism instead of values in children, nor to dilute true meaning, but to say, on balance, you know, the way this year has gone, I am sort of happy just to see the guy show up.

-- You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.

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