December 9, 2025
Introduction: In this article, James Pylant digs through old newspapers to find accounts of a real Santa Claus – and more than one! James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.
“Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?” eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon famously asked in a letter to the editor of the New York newspaper Sun in 1897. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” came the reply in an editorial that became a catchphrase after being widely reprinted in newspapers.
Believe it or not, in a red-and-white house in North Pole, New York, lived a man named Santa C. Claus. He worked at a theme park called Santa’s Workshop from 1970 to 1979 and spent much of his time traveling and making appearances as St. Nick. Born LeRoy Scholtz, he legally changed his name to Santa C. Claus in New Jersey in 1980. He died five years later at age 58, just two days before Christmas.
This article reports:
“I knew him for seven years,” said [Dick] Kutok, who hired Claus for a series of promotions and advertising spots. “He was probably the most giving person you ever met in your life.”
…“He believed that the greatest gift of all was love,” said Kutok. “He had made appearances all over the country and was known all over the world.”
LeRoy Scholtz wasn’t the only official Santa Claus. A few days after Christmas 1927 – the year Scholtz was born – the Associated Press reported “There is a Santa Claus,” echoing the famous editorial.
This article reports:
There is a Santa Claus.
His parents, Mr. and Mrs. William Connors, registered his name at the city clerk’s office today.
Santa Claus Connors was born on Christmas day.
However, other newspapers declared “There’s no Santa Claus” – at least not in the Connors family of Fall River. The birth certificate filed by the attending physician was a joke.
This article reports:
The newest addition to the Connors family is Joseph, says the father, and Joseph, not Santa Claus, he will be christened Sunday next.
Dr. Jeremiah F. Lowney, who attended mother and child, made out the birth certificate in City Hall for Santa Claus Connors, but he was just joking, said Mr. Connors. He continued that the doctor exclaimed, “Here is Santa Claus Connors,” as the baby was born shortly after midnight Christmas eve.
Yet a decade earlier, in 1917, a birth was reported in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, for a baby boy bearing St. Nick’s name, and it was no joke.
Initially, his birth was registered under a different name, and the official record was “corrected” in 1938, changing it from Paul Rhine Klaus to Santa Paul Klaus.* Paul is how he appeared in the 1930 federal census.
Far from white-haired and portly, this Keystone State Kris Kringle had brown hair, green eyes and grew to six feet, weighing 170 pounds, according to his 1940 draft registration. The federal census that year listed 22-year-old Santa Klaus living with his parents in Pottstown.
The borough’s celebrated resident was pictured in the local newspaper on Christmas Eve 1938.
The newspaper couldn’t resist noting that Pottstown lies a short distance from the borough of Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
That week, Klaus made two radio broadcasts in Philadelphia during the Christmas holiday, describing how “it feels to be Santa Klaus 365 days of the year.” He even played Santa at Macy’s in Philadelphia.
In November 1940, Santa P. Klaus began construction of a restaurant in Pottstown, later known as the Santa Klaus Luncheonette.
On Christmas Day 1941, the Pottstown Santa received mention in the syndicated “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
Meanwhile, a pretender to the name lived in Tennessee – one S. Klaus, a Chattanooga realtor, received Christmas-time telephone calls from children at his office. He was also featured in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
“Ripley’s sketch of the face of the Chattanoogan was a good enough likeness for friends of Sol C. Klaus, real estate man, to report that it was Klaus who was referred to by Ripley’s,” reported the Chattanooga Daily Times in December 1944. Two years later, another Chattanooga newspaper ran a story about the realtor.
Sadly, Santa Paul Klaus died at age 30 in 1948. According to a FamilySearch family tree, he was a husband and father. He was buried in Highland Memorial Park in Pottstown.
His great-nephew, actor Kyle Klaus, has appeared in several movies and television shows.
* Santa Paul Klaus (1938), “Pennsylvania, U.S., Birth Certificates, 1906-1917,” online database with images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 November 2025).
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Note on the header image: Santa Claus. Credit: https://depositphotos.com/home.html