A Poodle Person Who Hates Christmas?

I spent some years hating Christmas, I admit. It’s because I’m an elf. When we first moved to the mountains of western North Carolina 15 years ago, we of course went looking for work for which we were suited. Our family entertainment company made a good living for us in Florida, where our clowns, jugglers, fire eaters, super heroes, puppet shows and other costumed characters were hard at work every weekend and most of the week. But there aren’t a million people in a 30 mile radius of this homestead.

We used to have up to a dozen clown-elves covering six malls from the week before Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve. We have the costumes and the skills, so signed on as “Papa and Mama Elf” - plus Bob and Kenya the Christmas poodles - to do the stage shows at a seedy Christmas theme park in Cherokee. Basic clown stuff, some juggling and some dumb magic tricks. Bob and Kenya sported Elizabethan red and green collars, did the meet-and-greet at the theater door and gladly accepted love from the kids on their way out after the show was done. The kids loved it. The poodles loved it. We didn’t love it all that much…

Six shows a day, seven days a week, six months a year from May through October. In god-awful costumes, wigs, hats, tights, striped thigh socks and curly felt boots that are hot to wear in December. We quickly found that in July when it’s 95º in the shade, they’re unbearable.

Of course the park blared Christmas carols through loudspeakers all day every day, the same carols on the same loop, endlessly. Then we took two weeks off and went right into Christmas at the mall. Luckily for us, the Santa from the park was also the mall Santa, so we had an automatic in with the marketing director. That Santa was the best. A kind and portly man with honest twinkling eyes, real snow-white hair and perfectly manicured beard, he had been in show biz all his life. Father was a magician with a traveling medicine show out west, did great disappear-reappear stuff because he was the father of two sets of identical twins, girls and boys. Santa’s identical twin was a magician who ran the magic shop at the park. He was a mean drunk with a penchant for wife-beating, an awful man I called “Santa’s Evil Twin.” But that’s another story…

Anyway, I hated Christmas because after ‘doing Christmas’ for for a living 8 months of the year it seems so… anticlimactic. It’s very easy to get jaded if your job is Christmas. Where the consumerist frenzy, endless parade of spoiled children and emo teenagers, and way too many Bah Humbug parents can certainly get you down.

Then… then… there are those truly magical moments that make it all seem worthwhile. That occasional child who really, truly believes in magic and can make you believe it too… sigh.

Okay. I don’t hate Christmas, probably never REALLY did. It’s been good to us over the years. And I don’t care what anybody’s religious anger issues are, if you see Mama or Papa Elf in the mall or on the street during the holiday season, you’re entirely likely to hear a cheery “Merry Christmas!” whether you like it or not. Rudeness will earn a “merry humbug to you too, grumpy!” …and that at least gives kids a chuckle (line from The Muppet Christmas Carol).

It’s a dirty job. Somebody’s got to do it.

Merry Christmas from Mama and Papa Elf!

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Filed under Holidays, Poodle Love, Poodle Skills, Show Poodles, Showing Off |