For America's Santas, It's Hard to Be Jolly With the Tales They're Hearing

[Are_grits_groceries]

As a longtime Santa Claus at a suburban Chicago mall, Rod Riemersma used to jokingly tell children they would get socks for Christmas if they were naughty.

This year, he stopped telling the joke. Too many children were asking for socks. "They've probably heard their parents say, 'Geez, I wish I had some money to get them clothes,' " says Mr. Riemersma, 56 years old.
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That's what Jim Lewis did. A Santa at a Bass Pro Shop outdoor-goods store in Denver, he blanched when a blond girl in a red plaid dress recently asked for a pair of eyeglasses so she could see the classroom board. He recovered in time to motion over one of his elves, who told the girl's mother about the local Lions Club, which helps provide needy children with prescription glasses.

"It would be wonderful if we could grant more wishes like that, but unfortunately, this is the exception to the rule," says the 60-year-old Mr. Lewis, a real-estate appraiser when he takes off the Santa suit.

Sometimes even the best training can't keep Santa from being caught off guard. Mike Smith, who works as Santa at the Polaris Fashion Place in Columbus, Ohio, says a 5-year-old girl wearing a Dora the Explorer sweat shirt last month hopped in his lap and asked, "Can you turn my daddy into an elf?" "Why?" he asked.

"Because my daddy's out of work, and we're about to lose our house," she said.

The girl's mother, standing by her little brother's stroller, burst into tears. A stunned Mr. Smith asked the girl if her father was good with a hammer, and the girl said yes. "I didn't know what to say after that, so we just took the picture," he says with regret.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126074986920489905.html

I hope all those effing Wall Street momzers find themselves sleeping on a grate soon.

[Brickbat]

1. The newspaper I used to work at does "Letters to Santa" to run in the paper, and the women who has

to type them in said she couldn't get through them this year without crying because they were so desperate.

[Arctic Dave]

2. About seven years ago my wife was a manger at K mart and the FD and PD

would bring in lower income kids for a Christmas gift program. They would give them twenty bucks and let them pick out their choice of a toy . I will never ever forget this for the rest of my life, one of the officers bent down to ask the girl what kind of toy she wanted and she said she didn't want a toy, she wanted to get food instead.
To this day I still get enraged a tear up.

Greed is evil!

[RamboLiberal]

3. This one deserves a kick

Just wish I had seen it within the time period I could recommend.