Skills needed for a $137.50-per-hour job? Fatten up and practice saying “Ho, ho, ho!”

Now I know why my colleagues Matt Wickenheiser and Christopher Cousins are growing their beards out these days.

Sander Daniels, co-founder of the website Thumbtack.com, sent me — and presumably many other reporters around the country — an email this morning to draw attention to a story posted Monday night on his site taking a look behind the beards of shopping mall Santa Clauses nationwide. (Or is the plural Santa Clausi?)

Daniels’ website is one of the sites particularly well positioned to study the Santas, because the purpose of Thumbtack is to connect people searching for certain kinds of services with the folks providing them. Most of the calendar year, those services are things like computer help, babysitting, personal trainers and the like.

This time of year, however, Thumbtack gets an uptick in requests for Santa Clauses.

BDN file photo by Christopher Cousins

So the folks at that website thought it would be fun to scan the 169 Santas nationwide registered with their program and draw some conclusions. Among them? The average hourly rate listed for Santas (Santi?) registered with Thumbtack is $137.50.

The things they don’t tell you in high school.

Among the Santas interviewed for the story are a bus driver, minister and a lawyer. I’d make a joke here about how the going hourly rate for Santas is so high even a lawyer is motivated to don the red suit, but the guy quoted, in fairness, seems to do it in an effort to give back to the community more than to stuff his stocking with rolled up dollar bills.

The Santas used as source material for the piece say they spend between $500 and $5,000 for the signature holiday attire, and their jobs aren’t all fun and games. They get screamed at and peed on.

And those average hourly rates are skewed somewhat by assignments Santa-ing at posh corporate holiday conventions and elaborate photo shoots, never mind the television commercials.


Then there’s the training. Oh, the training. Apparently there are Santa schools out there and one entrepreneurial Santa is penning a 600-page manual for aspiring jolly elves currently making wooden toys in the minor leagues.

So the Santa industry, background checks and certified authentic beards and all, is much more competitive than I always imagined it was. But is it that way here in the Portland area?

Using the Thumbtack listings, the closest registered Santas I could find were from New Hampshire, and they did indeed list hourly rates of between $75 and $150.

One, from Manchester, who said he’s available for gigs in southern Maine, described himself this way:

With 25-plus years as a teacher, coach, public relations specialist and business manager, this Santa is comfortable working with all types of adults and children of any ages. Santa can be gentle and quiet with the reluctant three-year-old. Or join right in to lead the Conga line at the lively adult party.

I made a few phone calls, and it seems your Maine Santas, by and large, are still part of the 99 percent. I called some folks I know who have either dressed up as Santa for a holiday function or have arranged for Santas to sit for photos at one event or another.

In almost all the cases I called about, the Santas were volunteers.

I haven’t heard back yet, officially, from the gentleman in charge of the Maine Mall in South Portland, where there will be a Santa available for photos with kids until Christmas Eve, but the woman who answered the phone laughed audibly when I asked if Santas working at the mall are making $137.50 per hour.

Seth Koenig

About Seth Koenig

Seth has nearly a decade of professional journalism experience and writes about the greater Portland region.