December 26 Vallejo/Vacaville Arts and Entertainment Source: Who is Vallejo’s Santa Claus?

In the middle of a Dec. 14 rainstorm, Santa Claus, with his white beard and hat, walked into the Alibi Bookshop. Inside, children huddled together waiting to hear his jingling bells and “Ho, ho hos.”

Thomas Bilbo — Santa himself — was right t home.

The man behind the red suit has been portraying Santa Claus since 1995. The pressure of children’s holiday wishes, the desire to support charitable organizations and what makes the perfectly white beard are all thoughts that have occupied his mind at one time or another.

But his reason for doing it is simple: Joy.

Bilbo grew up in Picayune, Miss., the grandson of a preacher. “My grandfather was a preacher, I have uncles who are preachers and cousins who are preachers,” he says. “We were well-entrenched in the faith business.”

As a result, Christmas was a very important time in his community. His grandfather, who portrayed Santa when he was a kid, was a proponent of the magical side of the holiday.

“He saw that there was a part of it for children that was not so much about the church but about joy,” he says.

The first time that Bilbo himself stepped into the suit was almost 30 years ago, after he was asked to help out at a local restaurant for Christmas Eve. “At the time I was a little offended,” he remembers. He was younger, had a red beard, not white and was slightly hung up with the logistics.

At Alibi Bookshop, Bilbo wore a new Red Suit, a red hat, and bells tied around his wrist. He had rouge brushed on his cheeks and glasses on the bridge of his nose.

Bilbo has been dedicated to realism since that first year, when he shaved off his own beard to glue on a fake white one. However, it didn’t turn out too well.

“I had a very bad rash on my face from gluing the beard on and then I also got fleas from the suit that (the restaurant owner) had borrowed,” he laughs.

The next year he persevered, this time with his own beard, which he colored white, and a suit made for him by his mother. “Mama Claus made me a Santa suit,” he joked.

When he first started portraying Santa, Bilbo would use a product called Hair White, to turn his red beard the color of snow. As the years have gone by, he says he uses less and less. “More and more, I have to put less and less hair white in it.”

“It wasn’t so much portraying Santa that I loved, it was seeing the faces of the kids and the joy that it gave them, knowing that they were getting something out of it and enjoying being there,” he says.

At the Alibi Bookshop, as Bilbo read “The Night Before Christmas,” the store filled with people young and old. As he read, Bilbo took the time to ask his young audience questions along the way: “Did you know some people call me St. Nicholas?” and “Do you know what a sugar plum is?”

In the years since he started, Bilbo’s Santa has made appearances in Mississippi, Georgia and California, but Vallejo residents will recognize him for his appearance every year in the Mad Hatter Holiday Parade and Festival.

Bilbo is an “out and proud” member of the LGBTQ community, something that he doesn’t shy away from in his portrayal of Santa. At the Mad Hatter Parade, his elves are creatively done up in colorful makeup and hair. When he arrived at Alibi Bookshop that day, he braved the storm with the help of his rainbow umbrella.

“Even though he knew I was gay and he didn’t really care for that as much, he accepted me as me,” says Bilbo of his grandfather. “He loved seeing me as Santa.”

Bilbo has long sought out organizations, unusually nonprofits, that can utilize Santa, donating his time for free or for a charitable organization. Recently, Bilbo took his Santa to Sacramento with the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus, and in return, they donated money to the Solano Aids Coalition.

Bilbo himself believed in Santa as a child. It was spoiled for him, as it is for many kids, one late Christmas Eve night.

“I woke up in the middle of Christmas night and of course, Santa had come, but I see my mom sitting there in our living room smoking a cigarette, and she’s talking to my dad and she says, ‘Did you put all the screws in that bike?”’ Bilbo recalled, laughing.

He says although he doesn’t get nervous anymore about portraying Santa for the kids, he still gets caught up in the logistics and the look, wanting to be as believable as possible. Before his reading day at Alibi Bookshop, he got nervous because he left his “Santa glasses” in the car and was wearing his normal, still Santaesque glasses instead.

“I think the idea of Santa, even for people who no longer believe like young kids, is still someone who is there for the good times and for joyous times,” says Bilbo. “Someone who has the ability to bring joy to not just the young, but the old alike and everyone in between.”

His event at Alibi Bookshop was just one of the many that Bilbo attends as Santa every year. As he walked down the street that morning before heading to Alibi Bookshop, with his rainbow umbrella in hand, cars honked and waved and Bilbo “Ho, ho, hoed,” bringing a little joy to every girl and boy.