Bob Shaw Santa Article

By BOB SHAW | bshaw@pioneerpress.com | Pioneer PressPUBLISHED: May 31, 2008 at 11:01 p.m. | UPDATED: November 13, 2015 at 7:14 p.m.

Ho, ho … no-o-o-o! All is not jolly at the North Pole.

Santas and their elves are rebelling. Accusations of theft and lying are zipping around the Elf-Net e-mail message group.

Six members of Santa’s board of directors have been expelled. Gangs of banished Santas are forming rival groups.

“I know, this is not what you usually think of when you think of Santa,” said Gary Spooner, of Cottage Grove, who works as Santa Gary during the Christmas season.

In February, Spooner tried to join the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas, the original and largest trade group for Santas. His membership bid was immediately accepted, then rejected two weeks later without explanation.

“I felt like I was blackballed,” Spooner said. He was later accepted, but for him it was the first sign of chaos in the secret world of St. Nicks.

In recent months, the group gave the heave-ho-ho-ho to its founder, Tom Hartsfield.

“It was my creation. It really hurt when they took it away,” Hartsfield said.

As one ersatz Santa despaired in an e-mail: “What happened to our group? How did it come to this?”

What happens when good Santas go bad?

TALK ABOUT NAUGHTY

In 1995, Hartsfield was one of 10 Hollywood actors who played Santa, and he was angry about Santas with fake beards appearing in movies. He formed the group — requiring members to have authentic white beards — which mushroomed to 1,300 last year.

The story of what happened next comes from officials and members of the group, e-mails and Web site postings.

In August, the group president announced he had talked to a producer about making a reality TV show about real-life Santas, according to Vice President Jeff Germann, of Springfield, Mo.

“The contract said they could not present us in a negative light. But they decide what is negative,” he said. “They could say, ‘We need to make this guy a bank robber.’

“Our goal is to protect and improve the image of Santa.”

Germann said that because the president would profit from the venture, it was seen as a conflict of interest. He resigned under pressure.

Meanwhile, the group’s internal message group, called Elf-Net, became a hotbed of accusations.

Talk about naughty. One e-mail accused a Santa of stealing money and a video camera.

“We consider you a liar and a thief,” said another.

One Santa wrote that a colleague would “spend the day working with us on the convention and then was spending his evenings laughing at us and picking apart everything we said or did that day. … This was motivated by disrespect, hatred and animosity.”

Another disgruntled Santa hacked into the group’s server and shut down its Web site. Germann said one stole the group’s Internet domain name, AORBSsantas.org. The new one is AORBSinc.com.

As a result, Germann said, six board members quit, and about 20 members were kicked out for violating club rules.

“They dishonored themselves,” he said.

Hundreds of others followed, and membership in the group plummeted to 400.

As the group was falling apart, founder Hartsfield said members became obsessed with secrecy and bad publicity. He said they asked him to sign an agreement not to talk with reporters, but he refused.

As a result, Hartsfield said, he was not invited to the Jan. 10 AORBS meeting. He had been forced out of the group, he said.

The most public sign of the group’s demise was the cancellation of the annual summer convention, planned this year for Overland Park, Kan.

“Our convention was doomed from the start. (One Santa) worked toward its destruction from day one,” Germann wrote in an e-mail.

‘THE RASCALS ARE GONE’

In the past few years, splinter groups have sprung up, many formed by castaway Santas — Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, International Order of Santas, Santa Society, Santa America, Santas Across the Globe.

In Minnesota, Carl “Santa Carlucci” Immediato, of Bloomington, founded the Minnesota Santas Club, which has about 75 members. A former member of the AORBS board, he quit in disgust in 2006.

“The infighting is all ego-based,” Immediato said. “The membership came back to us and said, ‘You guys are fighting like kids.’ ”

He believes the national group offers Santas nothing a statewide group can’t offer. The needs of St. Nicks, he said, are for support and information from their jolly and overworked peer group.

“They want to know: Where do I get trained? Where do I get a costume? How do you handle a kid who says all he wants is for mommy and daddy not to get divorced?”

Germann said good riddance to all of them.

Membership is rebounding, he said. “The rascals are gone. This group is now honorable men — the dishonorable ones have left,” said Germann.

But the continual brouhaha bothers Spooner, the Cottage Grove Santa.

Santa deserves a lump of coal for being greedy, he said.

“Everyone in the world is trying to figure out how to make money in this,” Spooner said. “The Santa business is getting to be big business.”