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Since 2019, Peter Hogg, a 74-year-old retirement consultant from Gosford, north of Sydney, has been dressing up as Father Christmas in a yuletide travelling show called “Santa to the Max”, which he runs with his wife of 54 years, Janette, covering an area across Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong. They describe their event as a premium, personalised “Santa experience” specialising in private events.
Santa Students practice dancing at the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School workshop in Michigan.Credit: Getty Images
Before that, he worked as a freelance Santa for more than a decade, pulling long shifts in department stores. He recalls one particularly gruelling, eight-hour, toiletless shift inside Erina Fair shopping centre, on the NSW Central Coast, in 2016 with a shudder. “There was a queue a literal mile long,” says Hogg. “I reckon we got through 300 families that day. Santa Ron, who’d been due to relieve me after four hours, had collapsed backstage! I charge more these days, but I don’t have a stopwatch: I spend enough time with each child to make it feel special.”
According to the Victorian State Library, the first Australian department store to host Santa was Adelaide’s John Martin & Co in 1897 (it closed in 1998), with rival stores installing their own Father Christmases across the nation in quick succession.
In 1964, Melbourne’s Myer flew in Charles W. Howard and his wife, Ruth, from the world’s first Santa Claus School they’d established in upstate New York in 1937 (it’s now based in Midland, Michigan). Howard taught Australian Santas everything, from wardrobe hacks (mirrors concealed in sleeves to correct mercilessly pulled beards) to the sort of knowledge every self-respecting Santa should possess (“Any Santa who doesn’t know all the names of his reindeer is a fake”).
This year, David Jones’s Sydney store is offering 20-minute, “elevated” Santa experiences. The flagship store is expecting visits from 15,000 families, who can choose “Sensitive Santa” for neurodivergent children and “Pawtraits”, which welcomes beloved fur babies, too.
Viviana Diaz, chief Santa-wrangler at leading Sydney photography and event-service provider Scene to Believe – which is supplying 600 Santas across Australia to a variety of clients – says beyond meeting working-with-children requirements, it’s really about attitude: “We can supply the beards and bellies,” she says. “We’re looking for the people who enjoy creating a little bit of magic.”
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