The P.A. system at Saks played a twenty-minute loop of holiday music, providing ample opportunity to fall in love with each of those timeless classics again and again. And then again! Have you every wondered how many times you'll have to hear 'Holly, Jolly Christmas,' 'Feed the World' or 'Hark! The Bells,' before you can die? Well, put on some coffee because I'm living proof that you've got quite a bit more "Oh by golly have a holly jolly Christmas! This year!" to go.

I would zealously sing along to try and drown out the voices in my head. My favorite was the immortal Burl Ives classic, 'Silver and Gold.' Whenever 'Silver and Gold' played, Santa would sing and dance through the aisles, tossing candy-canes in the air, venting his joy to the world.

Silver and Gold, Silver and Gold, everyone wishes for Silver and Gold!
How can we measure its worth?
Just by the pleasure it gives here on Earth!

Occasionally a child would approach me with a request so adorable I became suspicious that a Chock Full 'O Nuts commercial was being secretly filmed without my consent.

The most memorable wish came from a five-year-old boy. He only wanted one thing from Santa: Keys.

"Keys for a car?" Santa asked.

"No, just keys," the boy said.

When the 30-minute break arrived at last, Santa would dash through the cafeteria like Regis Philbin, advocating Holiday Cheerfulness and flicking candy canes at employees eating their lunch.

I would usually grab an egg salad sandwich, a big bowl of frozen yogurt and another Big-Gulp half-filled with ginger ale. In lieu of paying at the cash register, Santa would just smile and spread the cane around.

Back in Santa's little storage closet I would rip off the damp beard and fat suit and hunker down in my underwear to enjoy my sandwich and add Jack Daniels to the ginger ale. That finished, I'd inhale the frozen yogurt to lower my core temperature before re-entry.

The second set typically featured Santa loosening up and letting his hair down a little. This was also when the trouble started.

By the time I reached the last hour of my shift, I'd be on the main floor yelling above the din, in a delirious fever: "Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas, everyone! Merry CHRISTMAS! Help yourself to anything you want in the store! Tell the cashier Santa said it's on the house!"

One morning at the end of week two, I got a phone call at home from Kathy at the temp agency, just as I was leaving for work (and struggling to stuff a new bottle of Turkey into my coat pocket).

"Hi, John, how are you!"

"I'm really great, Kathy! I'm really enjoying working with everyone on this project," I said.

"John, that's great! Listen, I'm calling because Patricia said reports are coming to her that you've been stealing food from the cafeteria. Is that true?"

"I just assumed that lunch was one of the perks."

"No, I'm afraid there's no such thing as a free lunch, not even for old St. Nick, ha ha!"

"It's customary for lunch to be provided for the talent," I tried. "What kind of amateur Punch n' Judy show are they running over there?"

Well, if that was how they were going to be, then fine, Santa would just have to drink his lunch on an empty stomach. So instead of swinging by the cafeteria on my break, I would proceed directly to Santa's Little Betty Ford Clinic and toss back a few.

"Yep, just you and me," I muttered to my elf helper, Al. "You and me, Al, and Santa makes three! Can't count on anybody in today's crass consumer culture. I am the friggin' Reason for the Season! But! We are going go out there spread the cheer, Alfred! You'd better not cry because Santa is here, you over-privileged acquisitive brats! Al, hombre, can you zip me up?"

Either nothing significant happened again until the third week, or I blacked out. I have no idea. By some miracle, I never found myself regaining consciousness on the F train at Coney Island, my Santa Suit caked with vomit. But it could have come to that-at best-if they hadn't terminated Santa first.

It is important to remember that during the year 1999, New York had reached the nosebleed nadir of Rudy Giuliani's "Quality of Life (for whitey)" campaign. Already that year he had promised that street vending would soon be illegal, gatherings of more than twenty persons would require a permit, and homeless people would be arrested if they refused to enter the city's filthy, crime-infested "shelters."

I personally had spent more than 24 hours in jail, and had been charged with felonies for climbing up on a crosswalk sign during a demonstration protesting the acquittal of the four police officers who killed the unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo, in the doorway of his building, by use of 41 bullets.

Also I had been arrested for putting up posters for a free concert on a temporary construction wall already covered with posters.

So, sometime about a week before Christmas, I was wandering through the fifth floor, just minding my own business, tossing candy canes to the masses, when I came upon a man with his back to me. Hearing my jolly exhortations, Rudy Giuliani turned to meet his Santa.

I proffered cane and spoke the first inoffensive comment that occurred to me.

"Ho! Ho! Ho! Well, Rudolph, you've been a very naughty boy this year!"

Mr. Mayor sneered and took the candy cane without saying a word.

As I watched him shuffle away, I momentarily pitied the guy. He had been taking a beating in the press! He had to face protesters who compared him to Hitler.

And now even Santa hated him.

Inevitably, while doing my shtick later on the main floor, I was approached by an unctuous man with the air of middle management about him.

"Listen, my friend," he said, "I've been watching you and we've got to have a little talk. Basically, I need less improv and more Ho-Ho-Ho out of you."

I was insulted. Infuriated. There I was, pouring my heart, soul and sweat out day after day-without one single note of appreciation from Saks-and then this anonymous critic, who didn't know a thing about the process of creating a character, had the arrogance to interrupt my performance and give me notes?

"Well, young man," I said, "you've got to let Santa be jolly in his own way."

"No," he said. "I know what I want. I've been getting some weird comments about some things you've been saying. From now on, I want you to stick to Ho-Ho-Ho and Happy Holidays, and I want it loud and cheerful. That's it."

"Young man, let me explain something to you," I said. "When children come to see Santa, sometimes they're afraid, and if Santa is too loud and boisterous, they start screaming and even crying, and nobody wants that, right? So you're just going to have to trust old Santa's judgment when it comes to the volume of his voice and the level of his cheer."

Without responding, he turned and seized the telephone from the information desk. I could see him ranting, presumably about me. He would receive his lump of coal someday, I thought-the hot, steaming coal of hell.

When I arrived home that night, there was a message on my machine.

"Hi, John! This is Kathy from Final Solution Staffing! Listen, John, I don't know what happened, but the client called me today and told me you don't need to come back tomorrow! They said there were complaints that you were asking women to ride in Santa's sleigh? I told them you must have been misinterpreted, but they wouldn't believe me! I don't know what to tell you, John! I feel terrible!"

Less than a week before Christmas and they laid Santa off. Without even a severance plate of cookies. How was I supposed pay my rent? To buy a present for my kid brother? Who would spike the egg nog?

The Corporate Overlords who owned Santa's fat ass could not care less, and I was cast down into desperate financial straits. The next day I made the rounds at my temp agencies and was told things would be dead until after the New Year.

But it was on my way home, waiting for the F train at 14th Street, that a way out of my impending indigence appeared before me. Take heart, unemployed masses of today! There's always money to be made in self-employment! Particularly, money to be made on subway platforms, standing immobile, with your face painted, wearing a silver unitard and holding a placard. As long as you don't mind the occasional $50 ticket or a night in the tombs.

John Del Signore is currently employed by Gothamist.

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One my first day, Patricia the Saks Santa-wrangler and I rode the escalators up to the eighth floor and turned off into a long, gray hallway lined with lockers. Sales clerks squeezed by us carrying trays of food and drink.

"There's an employee cafeteria back here in case you ever want anything to eat," she said.

"Nobody likes a skinny Santa!"

"Right. Here we are."

Patricia opened a door into a storage closet packed with boxes. On a hanger against the wall, my costume dangled like a velvet noose. It was a bulging one-piece padded shell with red velvet pants sewn into a candy-cane top with little pockets. The ensemble was accented with black boots and a floor-length red velvet cape that would get stuck in the escalator if I didn't hike it up. The white beard, wig, red cap and gloves were piled on the floor.

She pointed out an enormous red velvet sack.

"That's for the candy canes, which are in these boxes. Here's a copy of your schedule. You get a half-hour break at 3:30. The men's room is down the hall if you need to use that. So... What else? I think that's everything. Any questions? Okay, great! Well, have fun."

She stepped out of the room but immediately poked her head in.

"One more thing: there's another guy who uses the costume on your days off, so just try to keep it clean, okay?"

And that explained why the inside of the suit was damp! At least now I know it's not urine, I thought to myself.

Or do I?

Half an hour later, I stepped out onto the floor of Saks Fifth Avenue as the living embodiment of Saint Nicholas, Father of Modern Christmas, a 6'3" elf-rustler in charge of churning out the cheer.

"Oh, look! It's Santa! Look, hon! LOOK! SANTA!"

They set upon me immediately, at least twenty of them. Blinded by the flashing cameras, I sprayed candy-canes in a circle and yelled 'Ho-Ho-Ho!' in my jolliest James Earl Jones voice. My senses were swimming in the inferno of the suit.

It was that irritating sensation of wearing too many layers in a crowded shopping mall, cursing yourself for not leaving your coat in the car. But the Santa suit generated the warmth of not one overcoat, but four. Plus gloves. Plus a thick hat covering your head to make sure no heat escapes, and beneath that hat, a wig that hangs down the back of your neck, and a scratchy beard that smothers your face, so that the only part of your entire body exposed to the world is that small region beneath the eyes where your cheeks glow like jolly little blazing tree stumps.

Within minutes the inner foam of the fat suit had the consistency of steamed cabbage. But the perspiration didn't stop there. My feet were pitiful little Pomeranians melting in a microwave set on high.

"Aren't you a little young to be Santa?" one elderly woman quipped, the first of thousands to fire that hardball at me.

"Oh, young lady, flattery will get you everywhere," I chuckled, hugging her with one arm and then staggering on through the throng.

Saks does Santa a little differently than most department stores. Instead of a single seat of power in the center of the store, they employ a 'Roving Santa' to wander around spreading the Good Consumer News. According to Patricia's schedule, my day began up on the eighth floor at noon. Santa was to spend a half-hour on each floor, finally finishing on the main floor for the last hour, from five to six: prime time.

"Ho! Ho! Ho!" I choked, passing out candy canes to customers as they stepped off the escalator on the eighth floor. "Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!"

"Come on, Santa, put a little more oomph into that Ho-Ho-Ho!" a woman with two teenage boys ordered as she grabbed a candy-cane from my hand.

It became immediately clear that I wasn't going to cut it. Already I could feel a rash forming around my lips from the wet beard. My break was not for three more hours-and then it would be back in the suit for another three-hour shift of joy and cheer. I ducked behind a row of mannequins and yanked my beard down to breathe.

This wasn't worth it. Not for the money, not for the power, not even for the chance to inculcate children with Marxist ideology.

But just when I was about to tear off the wig and head back downriver, I suddenly remembered my old friend alcohol. Yes, it made perfect sense. Santa has to get jolly somehow, doesn't he?

The mere thought of oiling the furnace with the balm of cheap whiskey was enough to bring the sparkle back to Santa's eye.

I slapped the beard back on and returned to the floor. Three boys stepped off the elevator with their mother.

"Merry Christmas, boys!" I cried.

"We're Jewish," said their mother. Yes, the boys did appear to be wearing yarmulkes. They were but the first of many Jews to receive accidental Christmas blessings from an insensitive Santa.

So my little life as a sodden saint began. I quickly found a nice routine for myself. I would swing by the employee cafeteria at eleven-thirty and fill up a giant cup halfway to the top with ginger ale and plenty of ice. (I'd also grab a large frozen yogurt.) Then I would lock myself in Santa's little changing room, fill the rest of the Big-Gulp with Wild Turkey, and quickly consume the beverage and frozen dessert while putting on the sweaty layers of foam.

Time flies when you're lost in a steamy, booze-soaked haze. In fact, the first three hours of my shift were usually when my most inspired work occurred.

It's important to keep in mind here that unlike most department stores, there is no children's toy department at Saks. This is not to say that a steady stream of li'l ones didn't find me, but the vast bulk of my audience consisted of solitary women. Many of these women looked remarkably similar, inching up toward middle age. Nearly all were severely thin. They picked through the array of high-end merchandise with palpable ennui, but when their eyes fell upon the six-foot-four Santa, enormous smiles would creak across their faces.

As these women approached me to accept a candy-cane from my gloved hand, I would look into their eyes and sometimes glimpse the adult pushing the little girl aside. When they realized that standing before them was no geriatric elf, but a healthy young man buried away under all that hair and fat, the innuendo would begin.

The following are comments made to Santa Claus by women, either alone or shopping with friends:

"Ooh, Santa, you know how naughty I've been this year because you've seen me when I'm sleeping."

"Oh, Santa, I'd like to see what you've got for me under that suit." (Sometimes accompanied by attempted grab at Santa's ass.)

"Oh, Santa, I want to come for a ride in your sleigh. Why don't you to take me up to the North Pole – so I can melt it."

"Santa, I've been so naughty, I can't wait for you to stuff my stocking with your hot, black coal."

I swear on Donner and Blitzen, these are actual quotes, to which I would usually respond with: "Ho! Ho! Ho! Why don't you give Santa your phone number?" Never had one taker.

Why did these women feel such a feral need to sexual harass an innocent young (and pretty drunk) man drowning in his own sweat? One theory is the obvious some-kinda-Oedipal urge of the young girl for the old man. But I was not actually an old man, and they were definitely not young girls, so go figure. Maybe it had something to do with sexual-harassment payback. Now it was the man's turn to be the (literally) hot young thing in uncomfortable shoes, and they finally got to don the hard hat and heckle.

Or perhaps they really did want to unwrap Santa's package, but when he actually set it under the tree they were too timid to take it.


Tomorrow, our concluding installment, in which-well, did you think this was going to end particularly well for Santa?

John Del Signore is currently employed by Gothamist.

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I had been temping at Deutsche Bank for about a month, on assignment through one of the employment agencies that used to keep our city's offices humming with human resources. My supervisor had been out of town for the whole month, and my sole task was to take down his telephone messages and read them back when he called in. The period concluding that sentence also punctuates the full extent of my duties.

My daily routine went a little something like this:

1. Report at nine.
2. Retrieve a cup of complimentary juice from the commissary and withdraw into my cubicle.
3. Read the paper until I would catch myself falling asleep, and then walk off the lethargy by taking the scenic route to the men's room.
4. Finish the paper in sweet, sweet "stallitude."
5. Return to desk.
6. Read about Illuminati-Freemason-Stephen King-John Lennon conspiracy theories on the Internet. (Here you go!)
7. Check e-mail.
8. Take a goodwill tour of the office, walking one brisk lap with an attitude of business-like urgency, clutching a folder with my conspiracy print-outs.
9. Make copies for friends and masses.
10. Return to desk and read internet research about Mark of the Beast-UPC Symbol-Book of Revelation prophesies. (Enjoy!)
11. Check e-mail.
12. Catch myself falling asleep again and embark on another brisk office tour, smiling brightly and waving to my colleagues.
13. Walken's favorite word: LUNCH!
14. Repeat process in the afternoon with added emphasis on wakefulness.

All over town there were indolent kids occupying cubicles just like mine, getting paid almost twenty bucks an hour to merely show up and behave civilly. A special lady friend at the time had a job in the Flatiron making sweet coin as a graphic designer for a major publishing house. But whenever I called her she was busy playing a simulated drug dealer game. A buddy from college had gotten a temp job "working" in the Chase Manhattan Bank Y2K Preparedness Division-but the office was just a front for running his theater company. (For years I kept a one sentence e-mail from him taped to my refrigerator: "Who knew working for the Empire would be so boring?")

And so silent! It was unnerving, that plush seductive quiescence. I knew nothing of Deutsche Bank's role in the harmonious new global economy; I could only assume that any business conducted with such smooth silence had to be in the service of a magnificent evil. My friends and I were just happy little barnacles gripped fast to the rolling hull of the digital economy. We didn't care where we were going, and the officers on deck were too busy lighting each other's cigars to pay us much mind.

The morning of the big call began like all the rest, until the cheerful voice of a co-worker lacerated my cyber-reveries.

"This pod is so quiet today!" she breezily observed to one of my pod-mates. It seems that a cluster of cubicles is collectively referred to as a "pod." To keep up appearances, I hammered out my default 'look busy' sentence on the keyboard: "Whom the gods would destroy they first make complacent." Her little remark had, as the poet sings, cut like a knife.

Indeed, I had become one of the pod people. Was it not all a bit too easy, all this pay and no work? What was the catch? Were they monitoring us, doping us with some sort of sedative in the water cooler and studying our behavior? WHY WERE WE BEING ENCOURAGED TO GROW SO SLEEK AND FAT?

The phone!

"Hi, John, it's Kathy Dannaher! How ARE you?"

Kathy was one of the militantly upbeat young women from my temporary agency. I always mirrored her blistering enthusiasm with an equally cheery tone, tempered with just enough private irony to maintain my small illusion of dignity.

"I'm great, Kathy! Really busy over here. It's a fun job though. Great group of people. And every Friday they bring in pizza for everyone. And each person can have as many slices of pizza as they want, and complimentary pop, too!"

"That's great! Listen, John, I have got the perfect job for you."

"I don't know how it could get any better that this, Kathy."

"What would you say if I offered you the role of Santa Claus at Saks Fifth Avenue this Holiday season?"

"I'm twenty-four years old."

"That's what they want! They asked for a tall, young guy with good attitude! Bursting with holiday cheer!"

"But won't it be obvious that I'm just some twenty-something punk in a fat suit?"

"No, you're perfect! They're going for a crossover audience!"

"How much are they paying?"

"Nineteen an hour."

"Ho Ho Hokay," I said.

I reported to Saks on Black Friday of 1999, elbowing my way off Fifth Avenue into that frothing pandemonium of over-confident consumers that was to be my place of business. The flickering Christmas lights cast a lurid sheen on the mob as they swung shopping bags at the backs of each other's calves.

I fought my way toward the Information Desk to rendezvous with Patricia, my guide. I was struggling straight up into the heart of darkness itself. In fact, my job was to become that heart of darkness for thousands of innocent children programmed to see me as the living embodiment of Christmas. I was to be their Almighty until December twenty-fifth-granting their prayers with a pat on the head, or spurning them cruelly.

I, their sovereign lord, would walk among them, clothed in mortal rags. Who among us could turn down such power, and the nineteen dollars an hour that came with it? "Out there with these natives it must be a temptation to be God," is how it was put in Apocalypse Now.

Finally, I reached the woman whose name tag identified her as Patricia.

"Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas, young lady," I said.

"You must be John. I'm Patricia."

"Nice to meet you, Patricia! Have you been a good girl this year?"

"Not really."

"Ho, Ho, Ho."

I was already running out of juice.

"Uh, you know, " she said, "you don't have to be in character yet. It's okay."

Tomorrow: So maybe Santa drinks a little.

John Del Signore is currently employed by Gothamist.

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You guys. Can anyone else not stop thinking the butt bomber? Tossing and turning last night, it kept gnawing at me: this guy spent the last 30 hours of his life with a bomb up his ass. And then he died. Cause of death: exploding butt. (Or not, but come on.) How hardcore is that? It's not as if he excused himself to use the bathroom, excreted the bomb, then came back and threw it at his enemy and dashed away. No, he pulled a super colon blow and then he died.

Somehow it reminds me of those carefree tween years when my friends used to light farts (I never did). It was pretty fucking hilarious, but the fun stopped when I they heard that this one kid blew out his rectum while lighting a fart and had to wear diapers the rest of his life. (No way was that an urban legend.) But if you think that kid didn't destroy his ass for an important cause like this al-Qaeda guy, you've never seen someone light a fart. It's a game-changer.

And yet despite all the pain in that terrorist's ass, his target, the Saudi counter terrorism chief, was only slightly injured. He definitely left that room a changed man, but I don't think you get the virgins in heaven just for making an impression. Still, what was it like sitting there with the ass bomber, in the moments before he exploded? Did an expression of bliss pass over his face that made the counter terrorism chief think, "Oh fuck, this guy's about to cut one." Because after 30 hours with explosives packed in your ass, death would probably start to seem like an enormous relief.

30 hours! This asshole HATED the House of Saud, big time. And they're definitely hate-worthy. But are they butt bomb worthy? I really hated the Bush administration, but if I had the chance to butt bomb Dick Cheney when he was in office, would I have taken it? No. For one thing, I had Radiohead tickets. So does that make the butt bomber more of a man, because, like Reverend Martin Luther King said, a man who doesn't have something to die for is not fit to live? No, I think this guy just didn't know how to live for his cause, which is less glamorous than being the big shot hero butt bomber. al-Qaeda doesn't "get" Radiohead. Or deep-fried bacon, or Zooey Deschanel. And they're so sick with envy their asses are exploding.

So are these exploding assholes bound for America? We can only assume so, because while Abdullah Asiri's mission proved unsuccessful, this is like the Sputnik of butt bombing. His sly ass made it through all sorts of security, including airport screening. It's only a matter of time before those devious fucks in the al-Qaeda R&D labs-no doubt inspired by that scene in The Dark Knight-perfect the science of anal explosions and peg their sleeper agents here. This means Homeland Security is going to have to develop advanced metal detectors that can detect butt bombs, and as we speak some unlucky soldier is probably being designated the rear-loading guinea pig. No good can come of this. Except at least we now know how to get our sandwich and bottle of water past JFK security.

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