Obamanomics: Santas Being Taught To Lower Kids Expectations Because of Economic Slump…
All I want for Christmas is someone not named Barack Obama in the White House.
MIDLAND, Mich. (NYT) — Here, at the nation’s oldest, most celebrated, school for would-be Santa Clauses, much has stayed exactly the same over its nearly 75 years. A proper Claus ought to have pleasant breath, his beard curled just so and a hearty laugh that rumbles not from the throat but from deep below the diaphragm.
Yet this year, from the holiday parades, to the cheery carols piping from Main Street loudspeakers, to the “this way to Santa” lines at shopping centers, something more sobering has cast its shadow: the economic slump.
The result is a Christmas season in which Santas — including the 115 of them in this year’s graduating class of the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School — must learn to swiftly size up families’ financial circumstances, gently scale back children’s Christmas gift requests and even how to answer the wish some say they have been hearing with more frequency — “Can you bring my parent a job?”
Santas here tell of children who appear on their laps with lists that include the latest, most expensive toys and their parents, standing off to the side, stealthily but imploringly shaking their heads no. On the flip side, some, like Fred Honerkamp, have been visited by children whose expectations seem to have sunk to match the gloom; not long ago, a boy asked him for only one item — a pair of sneakers that actually fit.
“In the end, Santas have to be sure to never promise anything,” said Mr. Honerkamp, an alumnus of the school who also lectures here. He has devised his own tale about a wayward elf and slowed toy production at the North Pole for children who are requesting a gift clearly beyond their family’s price range. “It’s hard to watch sometimes because the children are like little barometers, mirrors on what the country has been through.”
Posted by ZIP on Wednesday, November 30, 2011, at 8:58 am | 
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In years when our kids didn’t always get the big-ticket items they hoped for, we told them that Santa had surely given those things to children who otherwise might not get anything, and our sons and daughter were always fine with that.
They’re also being taught not to say, “Merry Christmas”.
But wait, the black Messiah will perform a miracle.. What? Unionize Santa and his elves? That’s the miracle?
COAL,COAL MORE AND MORE COAL to belivered to 1600 Pennsylnavia Ave on Dec 24th
The whole Santa thing reeks to me anyway. That’s not what Christmas is about.
I remember when two sweet old ladies I worked with heard that I didn’t tell my children there was a Santa Claus, they were horrified .. like I was robbing my children of some precious deception.