MALL SANTA LEARNS SOME GIFTS CAN'T BE PRODUCED

The Christmas wish list grew longer and longer Friday for Tony Jamar, Santa Claus at Cape Girardeau's West Park Mall. On that list were the ever-popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Baby Alive and Nintendo's Game Boy, a hand-held video game.

Jamar, in his own grizzled beard, fielded Christmas present requests from children in his first day as Santa at the mall. He went to work after arriving at the mall Friday morning in a limousine and will play Santa until Christmas Eve.

Children sat on his lap in a high-backed green chair amidst a storybook setting of make-believe snow, jumbo ornaments, and an immense rocking horse, toy soldier and Raggedy Ann doll with an orange mop of hair.

"God, there's been so many things" requested, the 50-year-old Marble Hill resident said on a break from his job. "The Ninja Turtles are a hot item." Also hot, he said, is Nintendo's Game Boy.

As always, he said, the little children mostly want dolls. There are also a lot of requests for trucks and tractors, he said.

"A couple of the girls have asked for radios. I had one kid who wanted a CD (compact disc player). She was 16 and wanted to put it in her Porsche her daddy was going to buy her."

Joshua Stroder, 4, of Trenton, Ill., tried to speak through a mouthful of lollipop after a reporter asked him what he had asked Santa to bring him.

"Turtles," he said, squeezing the word out around the candy. His mother, Vicky Stroder, said he also asked for "a `Captain Planet Trap' whatever that is."

A Barbie car, Barbie house and the games Shark Attack and Pretty, Pretty Princess made up the Christmas list of 8-year-old Sara Rivet of Miller City, Ill., near Olive Branch. Sara waited in line to see Santa with her 4-year-old sister, Emily, and her mother, Cynthia Rivet.

"Last year I got everything I wanted except (the game) Mouse Trap," she said. That game is once again on her wish list, she said.

Jamar said he's played Santa Claus the last six years in malls in Houston, Texas, and Ohio and at the Cincinnati Zoo, from where he just returned Monday after four days of playing the part. Plus, he said, he's acted in a principle role in a segment on the television show "Rescue 911"; been in the movies "I Come in Peace" with Dolph Lundgren and "Miller and Miller," a German mini-series; and done commercials in Cape Girardeau. Currently, he said, he appears in a Cybertel advertisement in the Southeast Missourian.

In his time as Santa, he said, he's heard some weird present requests. One time a man asked for dentures. Another time a single mother wanted a husband. Kids have also asked for unrealistic presents like an elephant and a jet plane, he said.

So far there's been no weird requests here, said Jamar. "These people are pretty laid-back, I guess you'd say."

Jamar wants a Christmas present of his own. While playing Santa, he said, he'd like to help take away the commercialism of Christmas and focus the light of the holiday back on the birth of Jesus Christ.

"The only reason I do the character is to bring the love and the joy to Christmas, but the reason for the love and joy is the birth of Jesus Christ.

"I think Santa exists in the hearts of everybody," he added. "That's why when I do Santa I never ask for a fake beard. The beard and the belly; this is all me."

All-in-all, Jamar said, playing Santa is a fun job. But he said it's hard when a child asks for something he knows can't be given. A case in point, he said, is when a child asks for a present, but it's apparent from his or her parent's dress and appearance that the present can't be afforded.

Last year in Cincinnati, a blind boy of about 11 or 12 years of age asked him to give back his eyesight, he said. The boy, he said, had just lost it.

"I had the opportunity to pray with the little boy who was blind. His mother just wept," he said.

"That kind of hurts when you can't give back. You can always find toys, but somebody's eyes or bringing mommy and daddy back again.... It's hard. You just have to let them keep believing and you don't do anything to ever stop their belief."