A Daphne resident who spends his winters in a red suit and white beard is leading a national effort to help his fellow Santa Clauses get healthier, arguing that a trimmer Kris Kringle sets a better example for the children who sit on his lap.
Ernest Berger, who portrays Santa Claus and serves as president of the volunteer organization Santa America, says he has been encouraging some of his heavier colleagues in the Santa community to slim down. Berger’s goal, he says, is to reduce the average size of the men who play Santa by roughly 25 percent.
“We’re gently and relentlessly focused on getting these men to be positive about fitness,” Berger said from his home in Daphne.
A Different Kind of Role Model
Berger, whose own beard has gone the traditional Santa white, says the extra weight many Santas carry is more than a costume quirk. He calls it “a matter of self-preservation,” pointing to the physical toll that portraying Santa night after night during the holiday season can take on performers who are often older men.
The physical demands of the role are easy to underestimate. A professional or volunteer Santa may work dozens of appearances across a compressed six-week season — mall shifts that run eight hours, back-to-back home visits, community tree lightings, hospital and charity events — and every one of them involves lifting children onto a lap, holding squirming toddlers for photographs, crouching, rising and repeating for hours at a stretch. The suit itself, designed for warmth in the North Pole, becomes a problem under stage lights and crowded department stores, and dehydration among Santas is a recognized occupational hazard in the community.
For performers in their sixties and seventies — the age range where the traditional white beard comes most naturally — those demands collide with the health realities of older men. Many Santas in the volunteer community are retirees who took up the role after careers in other fields, and they bring with them the same health profile as American men their age: a population in which excess weight, joint trouble, and cardiovascular strain are common. Berger’s argument is that the same body that plays the part has to survive the part.
Beyond personal health, Berger argues that a heavier Santa reinforces an unhealthy image for the children who look up to the character. He wants Santa America’s volunteer performers, who appear at charity events, store visits and community gatherings across the country, to model a healthier version of the Christmas icon.
The concern about the example Santa sets has grown alongside broader public attention to childhood obesity in the United States. Health authorities have warned for years that American children face rising rates of weight-related conditions, and pediatricians increasingly counsel families on eating and activity habits formed early. Santa, one of the few figures children admire specifically for his roundness, occupies a curious position in that conversation — beloved precisely because of a body type that health professionals warn against. Berger is not suggesting the character be redrawn; he is suggesting the men inside the suit take their own health seriously enough to close some of the gap between legend and reality.
A Local Face for a National Group
Santa America is a nonprofit organization that coordinates volunteer Santa Claus appearances, often for charitable causes, and counts members across the country. Berger’s leadership of the group gives South Alabama an unlikely connection to a conversation playing out in Santa communities nationwide about health, image and tradition heading into the new year.
Volunteer Santa organizations occupy a small but genuine corner of American civic life. Groups like Santa America recruit, screen and train men to serve as Santa at hospitals, hospices, shelters and community events, with special attention given to appearances for children with special needs or in difficult circumstances. Training matters in this work: a good Santa is more than a costume, and established organizations coach their members on working with grieving children, with children in hospitals, and with families for whom a visit may be a once-a-year bright spot. The volunteer framework also keeps the cost of a Santa visit within reach of charities and families who could not book a commercial performer.
From his home in Daphne, Berger leads that network from the Eastern Shore — an office, of sorts, with a view of the causeway side of Mobile Bay rather than a snowy rooftop. Daphne, one of the fast-growing cities of Baldwin County, is not an obvious headquarters for a national Santa organization, but Berger’s location has not stopped the group’s work from stretching across state lines, and it has given the local community an occasional brush with the national Santa scene.
The Santa Community Weighs In
Berger’s campaign lands in a community that takes its craft seriously and debates its traditions seriously too. Santa Claus schools and training workshops operate across the country, teaching everything from beard care to improvisational comedy to the history of the character, and the men who attend them talk about health, stamina and longevity as career issues. Season-long performance schedules are grueling enough that discussions of fitness have become more common in Santa associations in recent years.
Not every Santa agrees with the framing. Some in the community argue that the traditional figure’s size is inseparable from the character’s image, and that the “jolly old elf” of poem and tradition would not look right slimmed down. Others point out that children rarely comment on weight, and that what matters is warmth, patience and presence. Berger’s answer to that debate is the one he offers about his own colleagues: gently and relentlessly, the message is health, not appearance — that a Santa who can climb into the position for a fifth hour of photos without straining is a better Santa for the children in front of him.
The effort also reflects the demographics of the role. The supply of men willing and able to play Santa has tightened in some markets as the current generation of performers ages, and organizations that supply Santas for charity events have an interest in keeping their volunteers healthy enough to return each December. A Santa who steps away for health reasons is a loss the organization feels at exactly the busiest time of year.
What the Campaign Looks Like in Practice
Berger’s approach to persuading his colleagues is built on encouragement rather than mandates. Santa America’s performers are volunteers, and no organization can order a grandfather in a red suit to lose weight — the work has to happen through example, information and the steady repetition of the same message. The phrase Berger uses captures the tone: gently and relentlessly. Members are urged to treat fitness as part of their professional preparation, the way they treat beard grooming or costume maintenance.
Practical suggestions in the Santa community run toward the achievable. Volunteers are encouraged to build walking into their routines, watch portion sizes through the off-season, and prepare for the December rush the way an athlete prepares for a season — because that is functionally what it is. The compressed calendar means a Santa who is sedentary for eleven months and then performs four-hour shifts daily through December faces exactly the kind of sudden physical demand that health professionals warn older men against.
The roughly 25 percent reduction Berger has set as a goal is a collective target for the community rather than a demand placed on any individual, and it is framed as a long-term effort measured across seasons rather than a single-year push. The point, he has said, is direction: fewer health problems among performers, longer careers behind the belt, and a healthier figure presented to the children who model themselves on the character.
The Season Ahead for Gulf Coast Santas
Along the Gulf Coast, the Santa season has its own character. The region’s malls, tree lightings and charity events draw performers from Mobile, Baldwin County and Pensacola, and the mild December climate does not change the intensity of the schedule — it only removes the snow. Hospital visits, in particular, are a fixture of the volunteer Santa calendar in the area, with performers visiting pediatric wards and family shelters in the weeks before Christmas.
Those visits are the heart of the case Berger makes to his colleagues. A child waiting in a hospital room in December does not get a do-over on the holiday, and the organizations that coordinate volunteer Santas treat each appearance as something closer to a commitment than an engagement. Keeping the men who make those visits healthy is, in Berger’s telling, part of honoring the commitment — a Santa who cannot complete his season leaves children without the visit they were promised.
The conversation Berger has started will continue in Santa associations across the country as the next season approaches, and South Alabama will have an unusual role in it: a national effort, led from a quiet street in Daphne, aimed at making the most beloved figure of the American Christmas a little more likely to be around — healthy and ho-ho-hoing — for many more Decembers to come.