Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Santa's Barber

Script: Santa?s Hair: Is It Really White?

Intro: Now that we?re in full holiday mode, one of the most pressing questions on peoples? minds is: How DOES Santa get that beautiful hair and beard? Is it real? Is it expensive? Only Santa?s hairdresser knows for sure. We asked reporter Philip Graitcer [Great-sir] from Georgia Public Broadcasting to visit one local beauty shop and find out.

PG: In a strip mall in Atlanta, there?s a busy beauty shop - you know, the kind of place where you can get a cut, a wash, or a perm and hear all the local gossip. Only this shop is full of Santas?sitting under dryers, getting their hair and beards bleached and styled, and exchanging Santa tricks of the trade. Shop co-owner, Joyce Beisel, is one of Santa?s most important helpers.

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They all have to get pretty before they have to go on the road. I do a lot of them throughout the United States so these guys start about October and they will last up until the 25th of December. They come in from CA, NY, MA, all over.

PG: The Santas travel here not by sleigh, but by car, airplane, mobile home, and bus. Ed Downey rode a Greyhound bus 14 hours. He?s been a Santa for 27 years.

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They?re trimming my hair, more than I hoped they would. They trimmed my eyebrows which I told them, ah, I wanted my eyebrows big and wild but she said nope. My beard was a little too curly. She said that this will straighten it out considerably and relax it.

PG: Beisel grooms more than 200 Santas each year to the tune of $195 for hair and beard treatment. It?s a painstaking process that generally lasts 6 or 7 hours. But Beisel says, depending on the Santa, it can take up to two days of applying messy, smelly chemicals to straighten or curl hair and beards.

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I trim it. I bleach it and I tone it. I condition it like mad and then I blow it dry and then I curl it. I even curl the beards and everything. Because the beards are made out of totally different hair, and if you use a curling iron on them, it will straighten them out. And it makes them look fuller, neater.

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I hope they are going to make me look a little more Santa-ish.

PG: Keith Lyon traveled here from Annapolis:

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My beard is a little bit darker than I would like, and it needs to be trimmed a little better. ?I?d like to whiten it up and look a little bit more like Santa. First time I have ever been in a salon other than pick up my wife.

PG: Joyce Beisel got into the Santa grooming business by chance. 28 years ago, she offered to style and care for the hair of a Santa in a nearby mall for free. She washed, bleached, trimmed, colored, and touched up his hair and beard for the 37 days of his Christmas run. Beisel says the grooming caused such a stir that the next year other Santas started coming to her shop ? as paying customers. But in spite of her role as Santa?s helper, Beisel doesn?t have special standing come Christmas.

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They don?t bring me nothing. It?s because I torture them so bad, I guess.

PG: The Santas say that naturally bearded guys are in high demand. There?s even an association ?The Amalgamated Order of Naturally Bearded Santas ? that meets annually to share trade secrets. Since some malls will no longer settle for artificial beards or hair, one of the things they talk about is how to avoid the occasional, painful tug of the beard.