DAVID ISAY(DI), CYNICAL SANTA(CS), OTHER SANTA(OS), KIDS, MOTHER, WOMAN
DI: It’s early in the morning at Santa central, an auditorium in the headquarters of the Volunteers of America, New York’s largest supplier of Santas. Several dozen bedraggled looking men slowly wander in and pull their red suits off the long racks, which sit on the room’s stage. For 80 years now, the Volunteers of America has been placing down-on-their-luck Santas on the streets of midtown Manhattan to raise money for charity.
In one corner of the auditorium sits a thin, moustached, half-dressed Santa hunched intently over the day’s racing form. His graying hair is cut short, he’s missing a front tooth, and his face furrows deeply each time he frowns — which he does a lot — as he suits up for the day’s work.
CS: Extra cap, extra bell, safety pins.
DI: This is Santa Surwinski. Not your typical Kris Kringle, he prefers to be known as Cynical Santa. At 8:15 precisely, he’s out the door.
OS: See you later.
CS: Maybe.
OS: See you down the road there.
DI: And just a short bus ride later, he’s on the job, ringing his brass bell, standing next to his red chimney donation box, right smack in front of Rockefeller Plaza. It’s not hard to pick out Cynical Santa from all of the others. He’s the one with the tobacco-stained white beard pulled down under his chin, a filterless Camel dangling from his lips.
KID: Show me some magic! Wiggle…
CS: I’m just me. Santa Claus’s helper that’s all.
KID: Wiggle your nose and make powder come out!
CS: I’m not here to entertain people.
KID: Why it’s not snowing?
DI: This is the seventh year that Cynical Santa has worked the streets of Manhattan, with his distinctive style and unique Santa philosophy.
CS: I don’t believe in miracles and faith and hope and all that — praying for things, and all that other crap that a lot of people try to push down on holidays. Things just don’t work that way, not in real life.
DI: Santa Surwinski should know. He’s had his fair share of hard knocks: ten years of living on the streets of New York, bouts with alcohol. Today he lives in a Volunteers of America residence hall and works occasionally as a welder. Except, of course, during Christmas, when he’s paid thirty-five bucks, plus fifteen percent of his donations in his chimney over one hundred dollars each day.
KIDS: Santa! Santa! Santa!
MOTHER: Uh, don’t pull his beard!
DI: It’s the mornings which are most trying time of day for Santa Surwinski, as he’s mobbed by the thousands of eager children unloading from buses at Rockefeller Plaza. Some shake his hand or ask questions, some stare up at him, gaping mouthed and silent. Others talk.
KIDS: Hey, you not Santa! Santa doesn’t smoke.
CS: Life is full of disappointments, and everybody don’t live happily ever after.
DI: Worst of all, says Santa Surwinski, are those who serenade.
CS: You can’t say, ”Look, take a walk. Get the hell out of here.” I’m supposed to be Santa, Santa’s helper, and the spirit of Christmas and all that garbage . . .
(singing)
Thank you children. I’ve got to go over to my chimney. I’ve got to go over to my chimney.
DI: Eddie Surwinski says he’s never taken the etiquette lessons taught in Santa school too seriously. This is a required day of classes for all Santas at the beginning of each season. There, the men are taught how to ring their bells, be jolly, ho ho ho.
CS: You know, the hell with the ho ho ho’s. You know.
DI: They’re taught how to say Merry Christmas in a dozen languages. And to excuse themselves when they have to go to the bathroom by explaining to the kids that it’s time to go feed the reindeer.
CS: I just say I got to go pee, that’s all.
DI: But believe it or not, despite his unorthodox methods, Cynical Santa Surwinski is the all-time greatest money-maker in the history of the Volunteers of America. Last week he pulled in a record $400 in donations on a single day.
CS: Think about it. New Yorkers are cynical people. They kinda know I’m not a bullshit artist, you know?
WOMAN: If I give you a buck, will you put your moustache back on and let me take a picture?
CS: Let me take that cigarette first.
DI: As a seven-year veteran of the Santa business, Surwinski is full of cynical memories. There are the countless times he’s been kicked and sworn at and spit on. There are the stories of his fellow Santas, like the tipsy one who accidentally fell through the window of Bloomingdales. Or the Santa, desperate for cash, who sold his suit on the Bowery for $10.
KID: Yo, Santa what’s happening?
CS: Nothing to do.
DI: It’s evening now at Rockefeller Plaza, and Santa Surwinski has been working now for about twelve hours. Things are not looking rosy. Donations have been coming in slowly all day. Relief Santa Smith, who was supposed to give Surwinski a break every two or three hours, has disappeared. It’s getting colder and colder. But that doesn’t faze Surwinski a bit. It would take a lot more than that to dampen this Cynical Santa’s special Christmas spirit.
CS: Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
KID: Put that on!
CS: Nah, it’s uncomfortable and it’s itching me. It’s just a lot of bull anyway.
DI: Santa Surwinski, do you have any sort of final Christmas message to leave us with?
CS: Everybody dies. Everybody dies. And you wonder what the hell, what’s it all about… I do.
DI: For National Public Radio, I’m David Isay.
DI: Merry Christmas Santa.
CS: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, whatever.