The public, however, is torn on how much the real Santa should be paid . Insure.com, which conducted

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At Santa School in Calgary, Alberta , rows of men in white beards and red velour suits learn the techniques that make one a true Claus. They start in early summer, says Jennifer Andrews, t5 t8 dean of Santa School and, she says, the lead elf.
Andrews spends the year teaching aspiring Santas how to walk, talk, laugh and even smell ( candy canes and peppermint and Christmas trees ). All of her students t5 t8 have two things in common: they love children and they love to make people happy.
We are in Canada, which is fitting since the north pole is the closest t5 t8 to us, Andrews says, casually. Santa recognizes that he obviously can t be everywhere all the time, so he always wants his best regional representatives trained to be as much like him as possible. So he has asked me to train Santas t5 t8 so that they can be as much like Santa while he is not available. Tim Dowling at Santa school in Covent Garden, London, learning to be Father Christmas. Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian
Some of them have careers; I have Santas who are judges and lawyers and engineers and investment bankers. Really high-profile people in their businesses, she says. I also have Santas who are couriers and military men. There is a real cross-section. t5 t8 Some of them do this for a little additional income. Some of them do it, honestly, just because they love it.
In the recent year, the public has developed high standards for their holiday entertainment. They are also willing to pay for it: a mall Santa can rake in somewhere between $6,000 to $8,000 during the holiday season t5 t8 .
Private events, like the ones Andrews books for her Santas, pay even better. Ric Erwin, vice president of Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, says he can make $8,000 to $10,000 t5 t8 for 60 to 90 hours of private events.
The public, however, is torn on how much the real Santa should be paid . Insure.com, which conducted the survey, determined that Santa s real salary would be somewhere around $140,000 a year. That s based on all the different jobs he does like professional shopper, gift wrapper, letter reader, sleigh pilot, list checker and how much each of those jobs takes in a year.
It s not a Wall Street suit, but it may as well be. Santa s suit and accessories can cost anywhere from few hundred dollars to well over $1,000. Most Santas provide their own uniform, so the start-up costs of being a professional Santa can rack up pretty quickly.
There is more to Santa than just a red suit, says Andrews. While the uniform is important and the school sells variety of suits from casual to traveling Santa suit it s his beard that is one of his most recognizable characteristics.
Most Santas have to bleach their beards. Sometimes they are quite white but there are little black strands through them. You want to bleach those out. It has to be done professionally with a high-peroxide-volume bleach and then they have to be toned afterwards and sometimes they have to be bleached t5 t8 several times and toned several times so that you don t get that yellowish t5 t8 appearance. Then we want them to have their beard trimmed and kept well. They have to wash and condition their beard every single day. Some Santas shape their beards and blow-dry them. Some of them will curl them. Depends on the type of beard they have.
Santa has to speak very closely to a lot of people so we want to make sure he is never off-putting. We want him to smell like candy canes and peppermint and Christmas trees and nothing other than that, explains Andrews.
Aspiring Santas should practice their ho-ho-ho s all the time, because a ho-ho-ho is Santa s laugh, she adds. They should t5 t8 also practice answering hard questions that Santa is likely to get from the children that interact with him.
Lots of times children will ask for their dad to come to home or they will ask for their dad to get a job again. Sometimes they have a loved one who has passed away and they want Santa to bring them back. And then sometimes it s just easy as asking if he is the real Santa.
We don t want Santa to be unrealistic. Obviously, we don t want him to give children hopes and expectation that they will be let down from. We don t want to make it worse than it is. But sometimes what these children need is a listening ear from somebody they know is always in their corner.
We t5 t8 want Santa to be empathetic, to be a good listener and to say: You know what, Santa wants that, too. I ll hope with you that that can happen. Do you like surprises for Christmas? What can Santa bring you?
We make sure that they recognize how important it is to have a grand entrance t5 t8 and a grand