Ace in the Ho-Ho-Ho

He's back from the wilds of Alaska. Back from his home on the Bering Sea. Back from the frozen rock quarry where he's the only employee lovingly called Santa.

For the second consecutive year, Santa Paul, a native of Nome, Alaska, is Brownsville's Father Christmas. He still has the beard, the belly and the long gray hair - that much is obvious from his perch at the Sunrise Mall. But his story begins far from the Rio Grande Valley.

It begins in the driver's seat of an 18-wheeler and on cucumber farms in the Pacific Northwest. It takes Paul to the continent's most remote corners, including the one he now calls home - an arctic plain he navigates on kicksled.

But of all the twists and turns of Paul's itinerant life - including a short-lived waltz with Sarah Palin - the most significant change came in the form of a red suit and velvet hat: the moment when Paul became Santa Paul.

"Something about it appealed to me," he said. "It's the best job in the world."

Paul made his way through the halls of the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School in Midland, Mich. He represented his country in Norway's Santa Olympics, where Santas from nine countries competed in events like speed gift-wrapping.

Now he's back in Brownsville, taking gift requests from newborns to 96-year-olds. Occasionally, he shows them photos of his hometown - the snowy tundra where a friend's reindeer, Velvet, prances undisturbed.

And then there are the homemade boots, lined with medallions bearing the names of Rudolph and friends. There are the storybooks he keeps under his chair, chronicling the legend of Paul's forebearer.

Here, not far from Footlocker and Radio Shack, Christmas myth and fact quietly converge.

A Santa from the great, white North? A Saint Nicholas contemplating his Bachelor of Santa Claus degree? These things are surreal, but they're true.

In a few weeks, Paul will be back to work at the rock quarry. Back to panning for gold in his spare time. But for now, he's Brownsville's own - a man whose personal history we're only beginning to learn.

"As long as they keep asking me back," he said, "I'll keep on comin'."

ksieff@brownsvilleherald.com