No one gets up close to as many coughing, sneezing children than a Santa during the holidays. Between lap sittings, picture posing and earfuls of whispered Christmas wishes, the jolly folks in the big red suits are exposed to all kinds of germs.
The time of year certainly doesn’t help: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that this is the season when the flu is in full force. And because germs are liveliest in closed spaces during dry conditions, being in close breathing proximity makes colds highly contagious.
So how do these St. Nicks keep the twinkle in their eyes? Three New York City Santas gave us their tips for staying healthy during the holiday season.
Preparation and sanitation
Dr. Charles Nuttall has donned that red suit and beard for more than 10 years, but has yet to take a sick day — thanks in part, he says, to the immunity built up from years as a kidney specialist.
“I got exposed to virtually every virus there is,” says the 73-year-old nephrologist, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who enjoys his seasonal gigs in Bryant Park, at Bank of America’s Winter Village.
His medical expertise comes in handy during the holidays, when he sees more than 4,000 visitors over an eight-day period. His preparation for winter starts in early October: “I’m very careful every year to get the flu shot,” he says.
“Eating healthy, not overindulging in alcohol and getting plenty of rest and sleep, all of those are important,” adds the grandfather of two.
Dressing correctly is also key. Nuttall has two Santa suits, one warmer than the other, and wears boots made for the Canadian Arctic. He also stays outside no longer than two hours at a time.
Those Santa gloves help, too: Nuttall wears them when greeting all his visitors and washes them after every shift. He also keeps Purell hand sanitizer handy, applying it before and after his shifts. And, whether he’s on the clock or not, he washes his hands frequently and keeps them away from his mouth and nose, where most germs get a foothold.
The end result? “I’ve never gotten sick from playing Santa in Bryant Park,” he says.
A cold-fighting elixir
John Condon, one of the meet-and-greet Santas at Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Spectacular, swears by the apple-cider-vinegar cocktails he calls his holiday “go-to.”
The 47-year-old has a specific recipe for the tart drink: He fills a 30-ounce water bottle with warm tap water to the three-quarter mark, then adds 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and, to make it more palatable, plenty of cinnamon.
“The cinnamon makes it taste more like an apple cider,” Condon says. “Every time I feel a cold coming on and I start taking apple cider vinegar, in two or three days all the symptoms are gone.”
Condon also takes other, less sour, precautions — including Airborne multivitamin supplements — to keep him healthy during his three-hour shifts at Radio City, freelance St. Nick gigs and his full-time job as a funeral director in New Jersey.
Playing Santa, he says, is the riskiest. “I don’t ever remember getting sick from getting in contact with something at the funeral home,” he says.
And while his busy schedule has made it hard for him to find time to sleep, he tries his best to get in eight hours of solid z’s.
“If you don’t get your sleep,” he says, “you’re going to be totally susceptible to everything.”
Don’t strain your voice
The man behind Times Square’s “Breakfast With Santa” — which involves singing and dancing with the kids — keeps himself at peak “Ho, ho, ho”-ness by breathing properly and warming up his body and voice.
“If you really focus on your breath you can overcome a lot of symptoms. I’m constantly loosening up the sinuses by conscious breathing,” says Walt Frasier, 46, who has a background in opera and practices a slow, deep breath “that warms the body,” he says.
In the morning before a gig, Frasier, who is trained in the Alexander Technique, which focuses on alignment, also does what he calls a “light ballet type of warm-up.”
“It’s a lot of passive stretching — neck rolls, twisting, doing hip rotations to keep the lower back loose,” he says. “And I reach side to side and up overhead.”
Before a long shift, he cuts back on talking to people to preserve his voice. During breaks, he does “a lot of humming,” which, he says, “releases tension in the neck and in the shoulders. Sometimes you’ll get into a song, but it’s more about low vibrations that are not that different from Buddhist monks doing their ‘oms’ while meditating.”
Plus, Santa’s thick uniform, gloves and beard limits his contact with even the germiest kid, he says. Whenever he performs outdoors, he makes sure to stay dry: He always keeps extra red suits on hand, just in case.
“There’s always one at the cleaners, one at the house, one in the car and one on me,” he says of his suits. “Keeping them clean and germ-free keeps the show going on: “It’s not like [Santa has] an understudy.”
Frasier also believes in staying hydrated, and makes sure to drink at least a gallon of water a day.