We're all children in some manner. With almost all, but not everyone, I see that sparkle in their eyes as if they were kids when they see Santa. Especially homeless, especially the homeless on the street. I've said so many times the embrace that I get on the street is like me hugging my mom. It's so real. It's Velcro. It's pretty amazing. – Merlin Taylor
SALT LAKE CITY — Perhaps they knew he was coming.
Or maybe they heard the bells on his jolly red suit clang as he padded down the hallway of the Road Home’s downtown homeless shelter.
One by one, three little heads popped out of a doorway as he walked by.
“It’s Santa! It’s Santa!” they shrieked, chasing him down the hallway.
Santa was there to take photographs with families staying at the shelter. As each group trickled into the makeshift studio, Santa (aka Merlin Taylor) takes a moment to talk to each child.
“How old are you now?” Santa asked.
The little tyke held up three fingers.
“You’ve gotten a lot bigger since last year.”
The boy smiled and nodded his head affirmatively.
For this moment — before that impudent know-it-all kid in kindergarten spoils the magic — this boy is a believer.
There’s something about Taylor that makes you want to hold on to that belief, friends say.
His full head of hair and beard are real. But it’s the twinkle in his eye that sets him apart from Santa’s helpers, said Cory Thorell, prop master for Ballet West.
“You can’t fake that,” Thorell said. “He really is merry.”
Taylor appears in dress rehearsals of "The Nutcracker," performances largely attended by students with disabilities. He also appears in a production on Christmas Eve, greeting children in the theater lobby after the performances.
Even adults, who have long outgrown childhood notions associated with holidays, soften when they see the jolly old elf.
“We’re all children in some manner. With almost all, but not everyone, I see that sparkle in their eyes as if they were kids when they see Santa. Especially homeless, especially the homeless on the street. I've said so many times the embrace that I get on the street is like me hugging my mom.
“It's so real. It's Velcro. It's pretty amazing.”
What the little children in homeless shelters or people on the street don’t know is that he’s not just Santa. He’s Santa with a cause.
Over the years, Taylor has built a network of support for the Road Home, a Salt Lake nonprofit organization that shelters, houses and provides case management to homeless men, women and families.
Taylor, who is a construction consultant, takes off the month of December to work Santa Claus gigs throughout the Salt Lake Valley. He accepts no payment, but “they have to write a check to the Road Home. And it has to be a healthy amount,” he said.
Taylor, who spent most of his career as a homebuilder, fell into the role of Santa by happenstance.
Celeste Eggert, the Road Home’s development director, asked Taylor, then a member of the nonprofit organization’s board of directors, to play Santa at a press conference on Candy Cane Corner, a joint effort among the Road Home, Volunteers of America-Utah and YWCA Utah to provide a holiday shopping experience for the families the organizations serve. All of the items are donated and the store is run by volunteers.
“He says I’m the first person that ever asked him to be Santa, which I find very hard to believe, if you’ve ever seen the man. Clearly, he looks like Santa,” Eggert said.
That was about eight years ago.
That first appearance evolved into Taylor making appearances at the Road Home’s annual Holiday Mediathon fundraising event and visiting children staying in its shelters.
“Then it became kind of a community thing,” Eggert said, with Taylor appearing at company and private parties with all proceeds going to the Road Home.
Taylor won’t disclose how much is contributed each season except to say, “I have a $200 minimum.”
Most of the gigs have some connection to the Road Home, he said.
His annual appearance at St. Mark’s Hospital got started when Sarah Kurrus, who was also on the organization’s board, purchased a visit from Santa during the Road Home's annual Chili Affair fundraising event.
She asked Santa to visit St. Mark's Hospital, where her husband, Thomas, was the chief of medicine.
During his inaugural visit, a mother whose baby was in the hospital’s newborn intensive care unit asked Taylor to pose in a photograph with her tiny son, who she feared would not live until Christmas.
“I’ll never forget him holding that tiny baby in those white gloves,” Kurrus said. Years later, Kurrus learned that the baby had survived.
Taylor now makes a regular appearance at the hospital to visit with families of hospital employees and patients, in part to thank workers for their annual collection drive that benefits the Road Home.
While Taylor's gift to the Road Home is primarily contributions derived from his appearances as Santa, his visits transcend saying “Merry Christmas” and wishing children and adults alike, a happy holiday.
Santa gives gifts, too — hundreds of little red flashlights printed with “The Road Home. Light the Way,” along with its website.
And he gives children a bag of “magic reindeer food,” which they are supposed to sprinkle outside on Christmas Eve.
“It helps my reindeer find your home,” the instructions say.
Santa, on a recent stop at Sharon’s Café in Holladay, handed both a flashlight and bag of magic reindeer food to 4-year-old Ian Ahearn.
“He’s so nice,” said Ian, whose step-grandmother Sharon Ahearn hosts a visit by Santa each year for customers and family members.
Taylor used to live in the neighborhood and was a regular at the cafe. Over the years, Ahearn learned more about his service on the Road Home board and about homelessness in general.
She also learned a great deal about homelessness from Amy, a young woman who worked for her as a waitress.
Amy came from a comfortable upbringing and a family that loved her. But she was also an alcoholic and had grown apart from her family. She sometimes stayed at the Road Home and hung out at Pioneer Park, Ahearn said.
While applying for the job at Sharon’s, Amy fell off a stool at the restaurant counter.
“I just laughed, but my daughter said, ‘Mom, I think she’s drunk.’
“I said, ‘You know what, there’s just something about her.’"
Ahearn hired her and Amy worked at the restaurant for five years and was sober the entire time, Ahearn said.
The young woman died about four years ago.
“She taught me a lot and I taught her a lot and it was great. And then Merlin taught me more,” Ahearn said. As a tribute to Amy, Ahearn collects items from customers throughout the month of December to give to the Candy Cane Corner.
While Ahearn said she’s seen her share of Santas over the years, there’s something special about Taylor.
“He puts that suit on and it’s like he’s magic. It’s unbelievable,” she said.
“I tell my husband all the time, 'I swear, I think he really is Santa.'”
Eggert said she particularly appreciates Taylor’s compassion and genuine interest in all people he meets.
“I’ve seen Merlin with our shelter clients, I’ve seen him with dignitaries. Yesterday I saw him with Gov. Gary Herbert. I saw him with Congressman Matheson today. You know what? He’s the same regardless who he talks to. He treats every person with compassion, dignity and respect,” Eggert said.
It’s no small feat, considering the month of December is both a marathon and a sprint for Taylor who has at least two appearances a day, often more, dressed in a Santa Claus suit that weighs about 12 pounds.
When it goes on, he’s “on.”
"It's hard to be jolly for 10 to 12 hours straight. It's exhausting, but there’s a magic about it. If you had a Superman or Spider-Man outfit on, you’d draw the same kind of attention, but this is magic, it really is,” he said.
On Christmas Eve, the longest day of the Santa Claus season, Taylor gets home around 9 p.m. or 10 p.m.
“My family party is probably pretty much over by then, but it's all worth it,” he said.
It is then that he delivers his final gift of the season, shaving his beard. His wife, Joan, is not a fan of what she calls "the wild Santa Claus beard,” which he starts growing in the spring.
“Then, she gets her boyfriend back,” Santa says, a twinkle in his eye.
Email: marjorie@deseretnews.com