How Santa School prepares Father Christmases for magical moments

Reindeer Names 101 and an Introduction to Ho Ho Hos are on the syllabus of an unusual festive course.

Each year dozens of prospective Father Christmases attend Santa School in Somerset House, London.

There, they are trained for jolly holiday work in grottos from Bognor Regis to the fashionable West End.

The Santas, who are, of course, just stand-ins for the real thing, are dressed in £2,000 suits and beards, given tutorials on how to have the twinkliest eyes, taught how to perform his trademark booming Ho Ho Ho, and are shown the most up-to-date toys each year.

They also have to navigate tricky questions, know what gift the child has asked for in their letter, and maintain the magic of Christmas .

Chief Santa trainer James Lovell, who has been giving lessons since the 1990s and runs the course through his company FeeJee Mermaid, said: “Being Santa is such a privilege. It’s a really important job.

“If you mess up Father Christmas you are, in many ways, ruining a part of a childhood.

“I can remember the first time I met Santa was a lovely thing, and everyone should have a memory like that from their childhood.

“I started as an elf in the 1990s and people were queuing for more than two hours, and I thought ‘If I queued that long I would want something pretty spectacular’, so I started the school to do just that.”

With more than 500 bookings already – and rising – the Father Christmases are sure to be busy. But James says it is not a job everyone can do. “You have to be patient, be able to be relentlessly jolly and, of course, love children.

“You need to be able to portray the role in a way that is convincing for a child – and for actors, it’s very rare to have an audience of one standing about 2ft away from you.”