EMOTION AND AUTHENTICITY AT THE HO HO HO AGENCY PHILIP HANCOCK AND MELISSA TYLER
The Ho Ho Ho Agency supplies male Santa Claus performers to department stores, shopping malls, and corporate and private events across the UK during the Christmas period. Selecting its performers largely from those with theatrical backgrounds, the agency sets the highest standards, aiming to provide a professional service to its customers and clients. Not only is each performer interviewed and vetted, they are trained in a host of Santa-related skills and attributes. Training includes learning to work with children, and about the myths and stories surrounding the Santa Claus character. It also includes guidance on how to behave in a way that cannot be construed as ‘inappropriate’ in an adult–child relationship. Despite the importance of the agency and its role in both preparing the performers for their work and securing contracts with clients, for most of the men concerned, the role of Santa Claus is something they perceive to be a personally significant undertaking. Many of them will tell you that in order to perform the role one has to invest emotionally in the character, fully embracing the ideals and stories associated with it.

While many of the performers are paid relatively well, few would consider financial remuneration as a significant motivation for the work that they do. Managing pain and threat in the grotto and beyond While for the majority of the time many of the performers find their work to be both personally fulfilling and underpinned by a genuine desire to embody the virtues and esteem of the character of Santa Claus, it is not a role without its darker side. Often, by virtue of the belief and trust children place in them the performers find themselves party to stories and expectations that are emotionally difficult. For example, one performer was clearly shaken by the request of one child for a photograph of him with the child’s dead sibling’s teddy bear. Others recount stories of meetings with children with severe disabilities, or life-limiting illnesses, which challenge their own self-belief and emotional control. Often this requires that they take ‘time out’, sometimes in the company of other performers: ‘You know, you just say “Give me five minutes before the next one . . . there’s a back door you can go outside and stand in the winter sunshine if there is any amongst the trees and just have two or three minutes and quite often you’ll see there’s another Father Christmas from the hut further up and he’s also listening to the birdsong, you know, and sometimes you shuffle over and say “How’s it going?” “Oh, okay.

I’ve just had one of those.” “Oh, right,”’ Perhaps most surprisingly, however, is the risk many of the performers feel they run from those who might wish to do harm either to the integrity of the character or to the performers themselves. Much of the time, this fear is based upon the possibility of a mistake or misunderstanding in relation to their interactions with the children who visit them. The Ho Ho Ho Agency puts many safeguards in place in this respect – for example ensuring that there is always a third party present during any encounter between Santa and a child. The wearing of white gloves is also prescribed, both to prevent any suggestion of skin to skin contact and also to render the performers hands visible at all times. Nonetheless, what is perceived to be the current high degree of suspicion surrounding the relationship between adults and young children, still leaves many of the performers feeling continually anxious. Perhaps even more alarming are reports of both deliberate attempts to portray the performers in a negative light, for example through children being sent in to make inappropriate requests to a performer, as well as the experience of physical abuse and violence. Such experiences range from simple jeering and beard and hat pulling by teenage gangs, to one tale of an attempted mugging while the performer sat in an open sleigh based in an out-of-town shopping mall. What is significant, however, is that common to almost all these kinds of stories is that the performers insist that they deal with the situations while remaining firmly in character, so as not to risk appearing inauthentic to any of the children who might witness these kinds of occurrences.
Questions
1 Why might the working environment of these Santa performers be described as an ‘emotional cauldron’? What does this mean for the performers, agency management and customers?
2 How might the Santa performers’ experience and management of emotions such as fear and anxiety be understood?
3 How do these emotions impact on the ways in which the men manage their performance and interactions with clients?
4 From an HR perspective, what measures might be introduced to make the working environment less stressful?