The most popular guy in town

That'd be Santa Claus, of course - at least for the next month.

I promised myself that I wouldn't start my Christmas posts until December 1 - and you might as well know from the start that I am the Christmas Queen - but these three stories about St. Nick pushed me to dive right into the season.

The New York Times reports that we can consult Nicholas: The Epic Journey from Saint to Santa Claus by Jeremy Seal, a book that follows St. Nicholas from his humble beginnings in Turkey to his role as an advertising icon. The author, often with his young daughters in tow, is hot on the trail of the historical Nicholas. The Times review is mixed, but on the up-side it sounds like an interesting read for those of us who still love the jolly old elf:

As the father of two girls who still want to believe, he is shrewd about the sacred Christmas contract. "The children loved him," he writes. "The parents, though they knew Santa had reduced them to toy-buying automatons, loved him for bringing joy to their children."

The advertising icon-Santa, however, is being attacked in Germany, but a Times of London commentator comes to his defense. A German group wants to boycott Santa as a symbol of consumption and return to honoring the life of St. Nicholas (read above-mentioned book to find out more, I guess). But Caitlin Moran is pro-fat guy:

I would board any putative Santa Wa-hey Express. It’s not hard. As P. Diddy would say — particularly if he’d sealed a particularly lucrative merchandising deal with him — Santa’s the man, really. For anyone with a tu’penny ha’penny interest in peddling any concept of spirituality to feckless minors, Santa is a peerless teaching aid. He allows us to convey the concept of a selfish life ultimately being without reward, to the notoriously unmetaphysical demograph of two-year-olds — and while getting rum truffles and a foot-spa for ourselves, to boot.

Given that before Santa was invented, we used to deport bad children to Australia, or cut their heads off — and have no rum truffles at all — this is all, surely, progress.

Amen, Sister! I'll take my Santa Claus any way I can get him - and still maintain a healthy respect for St. Nicholas. Santa Wa-hey, indeed!

But if you wanna see the guy at a local Atlanta mall, you'd better hop on the internet - quick! - to get one of the coveted slots. But even the big guy in the red suit can't control the technological quirkiness of 21st century lap-sitting reservations. Seems our city's most famous and popular Santa Claus at Phipps Plaza had to switch to telephone appointments when:

His Web site, santaatphipps.com, couldn't handle the demand of parents seeking mandatory reservations. When it crashed due to high demand, it left kids from 1 to 92 appointment-impaired since the mall was taking appointments only over the Internet for the first time this year.

Remember the good old days, when you'd just show up at the local department store or church hall and line up in fairly orderly fashion (as I recall) to sit on Santa's lap? Sigh.

Guess we know who's gonna get a stocking full of sweeties and who's gonna get a big ol' lump of coal (though with heating costs soaring, the coal's startin' to sound pretty good).