Reply #13: In Wichita, Kansas

[TlalocW]

There was a Santa show every Christmas time, and the guy who played Santa WAS Santa - had it down pat. He did it for at least two to three decades because my sister and brother-in-law (14 years older than I am) remembered him when they were kids. Anyway, his co-host was an elf hand puppet - very simple, face always frozen in a smile, only the arms had any kind of movement. His name was first "Cake Man" I think as he was a baker elf, but to me, he was always Toy Boy as that was the winning name they chose from a contest they had.

Every show, Santa would go over to a fancy cupboard on the wall and open it to show one of the toys that was out for Christmas (clever little marketing), and Toy Boy and he would later bring out a small slate with the number of days left until Santa went, "ZOOMING AROUND THE WORLD! ZOOMING AROUND THE WORLD!" which is what Toy Boy would yell while twirling his head to get his hat tassle to twirl until he was dizzy.

Anyway, the actor died a few years ago, and the local CBS affiliate I believe ran a bunch of shows. One of them was from the 1970s as the puppet was still Cake Man and started a mini-argument between my sister and brother-in-law and me. They're very conservative, and on that show we watched, Santa read the story of Jesus' birth from the Bible, and they were amazed, exclaiming, "You can't go on television and do that anymore." To which I said, "Linus does it every year during the Peanuts Christmas Special." We went back and forth a bit, and I ended with, "The networks can show just about anything they want within certain standards, which the story of Jesus' birth certainly falls within. The government isn't keeping them from doing it - their bottom line is. If they feel that they can make more money from Frosty than Jesus, guess who wins out?"

Not so heart-warming there at the end. :)

TlalocW