Behind The Beard With A Wyoming Mall Santa (Who Smokes And Drives A Kia)

CASPER — It’s Matthew Allwine’s first season as a working Santa, and already he’s handling punk kids like a pro.

Take as an example the 18-year-old who sat on his lap and performed mocking caricatures of the disabled, and then rumbled Santa's leg with a big, loud, premeditated fart.

What that teen didn’t anticipate is that Santa is a former military man and street-wise long-haul trucker with a perfect, white Santa beard and a soft heart for the disabled.

In other words, this punk farted on the wrong Kriss Kringle.

“I leaned in real quietly, and said, ‘Let me catch you out in the mall when I'm not in my costume, and I’ll stomp a mud hole in your ass.’” Allwine told the smart aleck.

“That kid popped right up and said, ‘OK, time to go!’” Allwine said. "He was trying to show off for his girlfriend, but making fun of the retarded and farting on my leg is not the way to do it.”

For nearly 200 years, bearded men have donned Santa suits in commercial settings, most notably department stores and malls.

Perhaps after so long it becomes easy to forget that behind the schtick are actual men with actual personalities, and who may actually hold those on the naughty list accountable.

In either case, that guy won’t have to be reminded again: Santas are people, too. 

“Some of the kids I don't like, I’ll just say it, they're darn-right disrespectful, and I feel like telling them, ‘Lump of coal for you,'” Allwine said during a break in the action at the Santa Station in Casper’s Eastridge Mall. 

Fortunately, most of the kids are sweethearts, he said, and that makes the work worthwhile.

“Much more of it is rewarding (for) all the joy you see on these faces,” he said. "One kid told me his only wish for Christmas was, he said,  ‘I just want my mom and dad to be happy.’ 

"I told him, 'You're gonna wish for someone else beside yourself you can take two candy canes.'”

Santa Transparency

Among his other character virtues, this Santa is big on transparency. 

His corporate employer attempted to kibosh Cowboy State Daily, explaining they “don’t participate in any stories that show Santa out of character” for fear it could “ruin the magic.”

But in a hushed voice, Santa told the reporter, “I have a break at 3. You can find me in the parking lot. I’ll be at the gray Kia having a cigarette.”

Santa School

Allwine, 67, has a prominent nose, elongated silver brows and half circles beneath his piercing blue eyes. 

His teeth are big and tinted yellow, and his smile’s got a strong gap in both rows. It all adds up to a comfortably broken-in look that welcomes people in like a rocking chair.

He was first scouted for the job while getting a pedicure in an Ozark, Missouri, Walmart, and the intro is about what you'd guess: Guy walks up and says, "Nice belly, nice beard, want to make some extra cash?"

It’s hard to imagine he was entirely flattered, but money talks, so Allwine sent himself to “Santa School” and joined the growing ranks of portrayal artists getting in on what turns out to be a cush side gig.

“When they told me how much it paid, I told them, 'I can do that!'” he said, raising his silver brows conspiratorially.

Even women are getting in on the racket, and Allwine described one of his colleagues at the Branson Santa School in Missouri this way:

“She has a deeper voice than most women, so she could sound just like a man. And the fake beard was, like, professional Hollywood-style. I'll tell you what, she was a damn good-looking Santa — convincing.”

Allwine's own voice is soft and warm, and as for what he learned at the Santa School, not much, because he enrolled in a program for advanced performers.

“I felt like an elementary school student thrown into a college class,” he said. "I was with all these independent Santas who do private events. And all they taught us was magic tricks.

"I didn’t know what to expect when I got to Casper. But I was going to do whatever I had to to make people believe I’m Santa.”

How Does He Get That Beard?

Without sufficient training, he leaned heavy on his look, and he’s since developed a technique to create an unimpeachably St. Nick-ian beard.

The trick is steam.

Each morning he shuts himself into his hotel bathroom with the shower and sink running on their hottest setting until it steams up so much he can’t see himself in the mirror. 

When the beard is sufficiently steamed, he gives it a delicate wanding of hair spray and shapes it into a classic Clause oblong.

“Once I get the steam into it, it’s still got enough cling to shape, but it won’t harden up like a rock,” he said. "I say to kids, ‘Go ahead, pull it! It’s real!’”

For many kids, the beard is the only litmus test that he’s the “real” Santa, just ask young Casper resident Annaveigh Woodle. 

Annaveigh had a letter to give to Santa, but she wasn’t about to give it to one of those pretend Santas. 

So her mother, Joey, set it up so she could decide for herself. 

“I told her, ‘OK, you can take your letter, and if it's the real Santa, you can leave it with him,” Joey said. "And if it’s not, we’ll take the note home and see if he picks it up on Christmas Eve."

After getting photos, she left her note with Allwine, because with a beard like that, he’s clearly the real Santa, Joey explained of her daughter’s logic. 

He now knows for certain that Annaveigh Woodle would like a stuffed guinea pig, matching teddy bears, and fuzzy socks this Christmas.

Then came the boy who didn’t want the magic to end. 

“I had one kid who every time his parents tried taking him off my lap, he’d reach around and hug my arm,” Allwine said with a beaming smile. "Finally, they got him off and carried him out, but as soon as they set him down, he came running as fast as he could right back to me. 

"He really didn’t want to leave."

Reindeer Steak

Allwine comes to the work of portrayal arts from a unique background. 

He's a former Marine Corps member, and he served in special operations for hostage rescue and terrorist negotiations. 

For this reason we must assume his favorite Christmas movie is “Die Hard.”

He was part of the recon team that helped save American medical students on the Caribbean island nation of Grenada during the 1983 U.S. conflict there, which was later memorialized in the movie “Heartbreak Ridge” starring Clint Eastwood.

Although, Allwine says the movie's portrayal was inaccurate. 

“There’s so much about that movie where I’m just saying, ‘That’s not the way it went,’” he said.

If he  doesn’t have comprehensive Santa schooling, he can nonetheless fall back on his firearms know-how — which, believe it or not, came to hands when a 10-year-old boy made veiled threats against Santa’s transportation.

“That boy told me he wanted a shotgun for Christmas, because he wanted to eat reindeer steak,” Allwine said. “So I told him, ‘Well, a 12-gauge would knock a kid like you back on your butt, and I don’t think you can even handle a 20-gauge.’"

He managed to simultaneously humble and amuse an adolescent boy. Some call that magic. 

What Does Santa Want For Christmas? 

The most touching moment in this holiday season came when he met a boy who’d recently lost a grandparent. 

The boy’s parents approached Allwine and told him, “Whatever he asks you, you can tell him that his mother said he’ll get it for Christmas,” Allwine said. 

“When I met the boy, he told me all he wanted for Christmas was for his family to be happy,” he said. "So I told him, ‘Don’t worry about that, because I know your family is going to be happy.’

"The boy started crying and I did too. I couldn’t help it.”

Allwine lost his wife in the aughts and has since grown increasingly close with different canine companions, including a mixed-breed that escaped a shelter in Missouri and traveled 60 miles before finally — as though by divine guidance, Allwine believes — falling right beside his 18-wheeler.

When asked what he’d like for Christmas, Allwine said he wants to end dog abuse, and he’s got an Old Testament approach for how he wants it done.

“I’d like it if they gave me the addresses of some of these sons of bitches hurting them animals, so I can put them in a cage and see how they like it,” he said.

It’s a very real emotion, because behind this Santa suit lies a very real man.

Contact Zakary Sonntag at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com

Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.