Keen on Claus

There's a real Scrooge of a researcher back East who's found that kids in the New York City area, at least, don't get excited anymore over Santa Claus.

But if you think the same might be true of boys and girls here — well, as they say in the Big Apple, fuhgeddabowdit.

Just try to find tiny tots whose eyes aren't all aglow as they stand in line with their parents at a Salt Lake area mall, waiting for their turn to sit on Santa's lap and recite their Christmas lists. "My little girl was very excited; the last six days, she mentioned it every hour or two," Michael Packard of Holladay said as he and his wife, Camille, tried to settle down their 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Allie, after her first-ever visit to Saint Nick.

Although her parents thought she might be a little scared, Allie clearly enjoyed the chance to make her Christmas wishes known to the ZCMI Center's man in red.

"Baby doll! Baby doll!" she exclaimed gleefully, even after being returned to the arms of her parents.

"She liked it," Packard said.

Glen Turnbow, the mall's Santa Claus, wasn't surprised. The children he sees are typically enthusiastic. "Much of the time, they talk to Santa pretty freely," said Turnbow, who by day is a civilian explosives expert at the Tooele Army Depot.

Of course, it probably helps that he's studied up on the most-requested toys — including Swan Lake Barbie and any number of remote-controlled cars — and that he's careful not to "ho-ho-ho" too loudly because that can be frightening.

Maybe that's the trouble with the New York-area Santas studied by Dr. John W. Trinkaus, a professor of management at the Zicklinn School of Business at Baruch College in Manhattan.

According to a story in The New York Times, Trinkaus monitored the facial expressions of children waiting to see Santa at two malls in Long Island and one in a New York City department store.

He found that more than 90 percent of the children were not smiling. "They were poker-faced," Trinkaus told the newspaper. "It was, 'OK, you want me to do this, I'll do this.' " And if that wasn't bad enough, he went on to label Santa Claus "yesterday's hero."

It would be easy to blame cynical New Yorkers for passing on such attitudes to their children. And several Utah moms suggested that's exactly where the blame for the blase youngsters belongs.

"I think it's the parents," Alexia Jeppson of Salt Lake City said after taking her children, Elizabeth, 5, and Jonah, 3, to see Santa at Fashion Place in Murray. Jeppson was indignant that the holiday may have been spoiled for some children.

"Not my kids. They love Santa," she said.

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