Behind the beard, Santa's spirit filled him

RALEIGH -- It wasn't just the pure white beard and twinkly blue eyes that made people believe John Battram was Santa Claus. His wife of 56 years, Patricia Clark Battram, says it was because her husband met the world with the same generous spirit as the patron saint of Christmas.

"He never asked a child, 'What do you want for Christmas?' " Patricia Battram said. "He liked to tell them that the spirit of Christmas was love."

John Battram died Dec. 5, just as Santa's helpers all over the world were dusting off their red suits and black boots for another season of ho, ho, hos.

Battram played Santa Claus professionally, but he was never a "mall Santa," as his wife describes it.

His portrayal of Santa began after he retired from a career as a professor of media studies at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

The couple began serving as costumed interpretive guides at Old World Wisconsin, a museum park that celebrates the Badger State's cultural heritage.

Battram's resemblance to the classic picture of Santa was so striking that park organizers asked him to play Claus in the Christmas parade.

After that, he was hooked.

"His true love was doing the Santa thing," said his daughter, Patti Battram, a travel agent who lives in Raleigh.

When he wasn't playing Santa at the theme park, he would play the role at community events. On Christmas, he would don his Kriss Kringle garb and walk down the street in their neighborhood, stopping at houses where he knew small children lived, to wave and wish them "Merry Christmas!"

Patricia Battram says the couple tried to avoid shopping centers during the holiday season. If John Battram happened to pass too close to a line of children waiting to see Santa at the mall, kids would start following him, saying, "That's the real Santa!"

Being a retired professor, he became keenly interested in his character and researched portrayals of St. Nicholas through the centuries. His daughter says he commissioned an Amish cobbler to make his Santa boots so they would be historically accurate.

As Santa, Battram made the winter cover of the Wisconsin Historical Society's quarterly magazine many times.

Lands' End clothing, Kohl's department stores and Harley-Davidson featured him as a model. In the early 1990s, he starred in a commercial for Ford Motor Co. that portrayed Santa pondering whether to trade in his sleigh for a new car.

John and Patricia met when he was a soldier living in Baltimore, where she was raised.

She was dating a West Point cadet at the time and would visit him in New York every weekend.

"[John] could never get a date on the weekends," she said.

Since she and John were both raised as Christian Scientists, he started taking her to church Wednesday nights, then out dancing afterward. It took just three weeks for Patricia to make up her mind.

"After that, I gave up my West Point cadet," she said.

Shared values

Their shared faith in a strand of Christianity that embraces a gentle God helped keep them together for more than five decades.

Patti Battram said her parents also shared a dedication to their work.

"When they would take on something, they would do it thoroughly," she says. "That has affected me greatly.

"They always taught me to do something you enjoy doing rather than go out and collect a paycheck and complain about what you do."

Like Santa Claus, Battram was a world traveler.

As a professor, he had a month and a half off every summer, so he and Patricia took their children to all 48 contiguous states.

"We taught them history by going up and down the coast," Patricia Battram says.

The family saw a good bit of the rest of the world, as well.

In the early 1970s, UNESCO tapped John Battram to help start a coed university in Qatar. He took his wife and three children to the small Arab state to live for more than a year.

Afterward, they toured the Middle East and Europe, seeing 15 countries in 15 weeks.

After the couple moved to Raleigh a few years ago, John's appearances as Santa were fewer, though he would still play the guy in red at gatherings of Principia College alumni.

Children persisted in believing he was St. Nick, however.

His wife says that even in the summertime, kids would follow him with wide eyes, asking, "Are you the real Santa?"

His answer would always be: "Well, that's up to you."

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