Sketchy Santas: When Christmas Gets Weird

  • Share
  • Read Later

For children, visiting Santa Claus is the highlight of the year; for parents, it can be a complicated, stressful nightmare. What if your child notices that his beard isn't real? Or asks what Santa's doing in a shopping mall? (This year you have an easy out: just say he's working a second job because of the recession.) What do you do if your child starts to cry? Or won't sit still? What if he yawns or sneezes or drools just as Santa's elflike assistant snaps the photo? You just waited in line for over an hour to get that keepsake memory; you're not going to give up now.

Sketchy Santas captures all these yuletide failures and more. The website features perhaps the most unsettling batch of holiday pictures ever compiled. And it serves as a reminder that both parents and Santas need to set some boundaries.

Santas should adhere to St. Nick's traditional dress code — red coat, red pants, white beard — at all times. Not a creepy mustache, not a dirty dishrag and clown nose, but a real honest-to-goodness beard that can withstand some curious tugs. They should be friendly but not too friendly. And they probably shouldn't be drunk.

Parents, meanwhile, need to keep the kid's crying to a minimum. And they definitely need to know when their son or daughter is too old to sit on Santa's lap. Otherwise, things can get weird.