In North Pole, Alaska, Santa Claus is a bastion of blue on a city council as red as Rudolph’s nose Published December 15, 2020
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Print article First things first: Yes, Santa Claus is his legal name. It’s on his government identification, and the mail that arrives at his apartment. A long time ago, he was called Thomas O’Connor. He doesn’t answer to that name anymore. If someone shouted it in the North Pole Safeway, “I wouldn’t even turn my head,” he says.
This Santa Claus is a 73-year-old medical-marijuana-using, Bernie-supporting vegetarian monk who lives at the poverty line, does not drive and thinks truth be told that Christmas is a “crass commercial secular spectacle.”