Like many men who retire in their 60s, Bill Beachy grew out his beard, which was fading to white. He spent more time with his grandkids.
One day, his daughter snapped a picture of Beachy—reading glasses slid down his nose, inspecting a toy he was working on—and joked that her dad was turning into Santa.
That’s how Beachy, longtime Methodist pastor and professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, decided to become a professional Santa Claus. For the past ten years, Beachy has worked as many as 15 gigs each holiday season, posing with hundreds of kids and hearing their Christmas wish lists.
Graying pastors can make good Santas. They’re comfortable one-on-one or before a crowd, they’re tender toward kids, and they want to serve their communities. They also love Christmas.
“It’s a lot of fun to see the delight in the children and provide a safe space for them,” he said.
Evangelicals may see an inherent tension in pastors who portray Santa. Many forgo the myth of a man coming down the chimney to bring presents, and view the modern Santa figure as distracting from celebrations of Jesus’ birth.
But men of the cloth who don the red suit see the Santa gig as an extension of their ministry. They offer hope and encouragement to children and intentionally look for chances to point families to the true meaning of Christmas.
In addition to offering spiritual care, pastor Santas develop their own personas—drawing on the wonder of kids and anchoring their characters in the Christian tradition of Saint Nicholas.
In 2012, “Reverend Santa” Steve Lantz, an actor, sports chaplain, and ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America, was hired to play a Santa in a holiday commercial for The Home Depot. Though he was in his 40s at the time, Lantz grew out his beard and realized that at 6’2″ and more than 300 pounds, he looked the part. In 2023, he decided to grow out his beard again and don the red suit.
“I didn’t realize that Santa is a niche market and once you’re in, you’re in,” he said.
Lantz now works several high-profile gigs each season, including holiday festivals at the Miami zoo and Ritz-Carlton hotel in Key Biscayne, Florida. He is also a member, with more than 20 other pastors, of the International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas and the Tampa-based Palm Tree Santas, where he’s one of a trio of pastors who participate.
Cameron Reeder first dressed as Santa in 2018, when he was a pastor at World Harvest Outreach in Hartselle, Alabama. He had a white beard, so a friend paid him to play Santa for his kids.
“That was the moment that it became a sideline and later a passion for me,” said Reeder, now 64 and retired from the pastorate.
Reeder enjoys the fellowship that working as Santa brings. He’s part of Cotton State Santas, a group of about 320 Santas working in Alabama. He knows of two other pastors in the group. And the work as Santa has become a family affair too. His wife joins him as Mrs. Claus, and his grandchildren accompany him as elves.
During his first year working as Santa, Lantz went viral. As he posed for photos at an event at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, a little girl expressed reluctance to sit on his lap. Lantz took the rebuff in stride and assured the girl that she was under no obligation to sit on anyone’s lap.
The girl’s mother filmed the interaction, and the 19-second clip of Lantz has more than 294,000 likes on TikTok and led to appearances on Good Morning America and other news programs.
Lantz said the good news of the gospel is that you are not good enough but Jesus is. In his brief interactions with children, he tries to give them a version of that message.
“I tell them I put them on the nice list not because of who they are but because of who I am [as Santa]. I tell them, ‘Keep making good decisions. I am proud of you.’”
He also looks for opportunities to tell visitors about the real Saint Nicholas and his deeds of mercy toward the poor.
He thinks of his work as Santa as a “Trojan horse” for sharing the gospel. He wears a star-of-Bethlehem brooch on the white trim of his hat, and when anyone asks about it, he’s happy to share with them about the first Christmas and the role of the star in pointing the shepherds toward Bethlehem.
But he has faced detractors too. When the video of his interaction with a child went viral, he was profiled by The Christian Post and Fox News. Reading the comments on those pieces stung, as readers criticized his choice to portray Santa. But people he knows personally have no criticisms.
“The only thing I ever hear from people I know is support,” he said.
Lantz’s work highlights the tension many Christians feel as they decide whether to invite Santa into their Christmas celebrations and consider to what extent his presence there eclipses the real meaning of the holiday.
“On the one hand, the replacement of Jesus Christ at Christmas by Santa Claus is a sacrilege,” wrote theologian William Lane Craig in a 2015 blog post about whether Christians should let their children believe in Santa. “Santa Claus is obviously a sort of God-surrogate: an all-seeing person endowed with miraculous powers, who’s making a list and checking it twice in order to find out if you’ve been naughty or nice.”
Craig argues that while lying to children is wrong, parents can teach their children about the historical Saint Nicholas and explain that we pretend the man in the red suit is really Santa Claus.
Cameron Reeder’s red Santa outfit is fancier than the cheap suit he first used, and it now includes a belt buckle with the Nativity scene. If parents do not object, he happily tells children about Saint Nicholas and his gift giving and points to Jesus as “the center of the holiday,” he said.
For Beachy, secular settings call for a silent witness to the welcome of Jesus in the Incarnation. He does not talk about the real meaning of Christmas there, but when he works an event at or for a church—like the two community-outreach events he will work this season hosted by churches—he’s happy to tell children to ask their parents to read them the Christmas story in Luke 2.
When Beachy works with under-resourced families, he tries to spend extra time with those children.
And in those settings, children sometimes unburden their hearts to the man in red. Reeder said children have “no secrets” with Santa, and he sometimes hears about deteriorating marriages or the death of a loved one.
“For requests like getting mom and dad back together, I will often ask the parent if it is okay to pray with the child,” Reeder said. “I explain that some things are beyond Santa, but God hears us when we pray to him. And he has the answers to life’s toughest questions.”
Every Santa will encounter children who are skeptical. Lantz said if a family brings several children and the older children do not want to go along with the Santa act, he’ll pull them aside for a little jolly straight talk.
“I will tell them, ‘Don’t worry about it. I know I’m not real. You know I’m not real. Just don’t tell your little sibling that I’m not real,’” Lantz said.
Reeder said he uses those opportunities to tell children about Christmas’ true meaning.
Beachy said he sometimes encounters Santa skeptics, and he invites them to pull on his beard. Even if they remain unconvinced, he tells them that “regardless, I love them and believe they are special, and I will definitely visit them on Christmas Eve,” he said.
And when children inevitably ask for a new pet for Christmas, Beachy said he lets them down gently, telling them it’s too cold in the sleigh for animals.
Each season he receives more requests for appearances at events, parades, and photography sessions. One year he was Santa at a local event benefiting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, where his grandson had received treatment.
But Reeder, whose Santa name is “Santa Cam,” said his clients should know what to expect from him.
“I am a Christian first and Santa next. So if you get me for a Santa, you are likely to get a touch of the gospel message with me.”
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