Wausa couple spends the Holiday Season helping Santa

WAUSA — Santa Claus has two good helpers when it comes time to check his list of Wausa names twice for those who have been naughty or nice.

Bruce and Linda Murdock of Wausa enjoy dressing up as Santa and Mrs. Claus each December to spread Christmas cheer to the Knox County community they call home.

The 74-year-olds’ primary reason for becoming Jolly Old St. Nicholas and his wife every year is to bring joy to people’s lives, especially children.

“Until you’ve been a Santa and you have kids come up and sit on your lap that are between the ages of maybe 3 and 7, 8 – in that range, maybe a little bit older, especially if they still believe – the way that they look at you, they’re just thrilled,” Bruce said.

“They’re just so excited,” he said. “They’re just so happy to be there.”

Linda noted some kids have approached Santa and Mrs. Claus with questions in their eyes, such as, “Is this guy for real?”

She gave an example of a little boy who wanted to touch Bruce’s real beard during the annual Christmas in Wausa celebration on Dec. 6.

Linda told the boy to touch Bruce’s beard and she said the boy could hardly believe it as she and the boy both pulled on the snowwhite facial hair, which stayed in place.

“His eyes got even bigger after we told him he could touch it and pull it,” she said. “He wanted a red tractor.”

Bruce laughed because he checked again with the boy about what color of tractor he wanted, and he wanted a red one, not green.

“He wanted a tractor and I said, ‘OK, toy tractor or real tractor?’” he said. “Because you never know. Santa’s got to find out.”

Linda recalled some of the children’s Christmas wishes they heard in Wausa this year included real animals such as an American Quarter horse, a ferret and dogs.

“One boy wanted a hog barn – a real hog barn because he has one hog that’s his,” she said. “And he wants a barn for his hog.”

Bruce has portrayed Santa for Wausa’s annual Christmas celebration since 2012, starting the year after he and Linda moved to the community from Omaha.

Their son-in-law Dan Story had served as Wausa’s Kris Kringle for nearly a decade before Bruce stepped into the iconic red-and-white outfit and black boots.

Stacy Bigler, one of Bruce and Linda’s daughters, made Bruce his own Santa suit in 2010 because it was something he wanted to have just in case he ever had the chance to dress up as St. Nick.

“I didn’t use that Santa suit for a number of years,” Bruce said. “I wanted it, but I didn’t know when I would use it because I didn’t have any reason to be a Santa.

“Then the opportunity presented itself,” he said. “Dan wanted to step away from it. I knew about it and I had a suit.”

At the time when he and Linda moved to Wausa, Bruce became a Sunday school teacher at the community’s Evangelical Covenant Church.

“All the kids were getting to know him, the little ones, the little kids at our church,” Linda said. “Dan talked to him about being Santa and he knew he had a Santa suit. He thought that would be a fun thing to do.”

For the first three to four years as Santa, Bruce wore a fake beard over his rosy cheeks instead of using his naturally grown one.

“Those fake Santa beards always look awful,” he said. “They don’t look anything like the real thing. They’re just all over the place and they’re falling down.”

Bruce eventually just grew his facial hair out, noting that his long and white beard this year is the best one he has had yet.

“He was naturally getting whiter, and so a comment was made probably by family, ‘Dad, why do you wear a fake beard when you’re white?’” Linda said.

“In the beginning, he started letting it grow the first of October and he wouldn’t shave any after that,” she said. “Then he moved back to September. Now this year, he started in August.”

Bruce and Linda volunteer their time to be Santa and Mrs. Claus for Christmas in Wausa, which is put on by the Wausa Community Club.

“We do it for nothing,” Bruce said. “They don’t even have to pay us. And I had a suit. It just worked out to make the transition.”

Linda has been dressing up as Mrs. Claus each December since 2018, though she and Bruce did not get into their costumes for the community celebration last year because it was canceled due to COVID-19.

For this year’s Christmas in Wausa, here came Santa to town on a Viking ship – the community’s version of his sleigh – to visit with children at the Wausa Auditorium.

Bruce, as Santa, shouted “Ho, ho, ho!” and “Merry Christmas!” and rang jingle bells as he sailed down Wausa’s main drag to the auditorium in a Viking ship adorned with flags and lights.

Excited children waved and yelled at Santa as the water vessel traveled downtown on Broadway Street with a group of Vikings – not reindeer – leading the way on a cold, crisp evening.

In addition to Christmas in Wausa, Bruce and Linda have become the powerful North Pole pair annually for private family holiday parties in Magnet and Wausa.

“Other people in town know we do that, of course,” Bruce said. “It’s not anything that we recruit business for. The ones we do here locally, there’s no set charge.

“They feel like they should give us something, so one of them does it by donation,” he said. “They pass a hat, in other words, and then they give us whatever’s in the hat.”

A new event for Bruce and Linda to dress up for this year was on Dec. 17 at Millard Public Schools’ Willa Cather Elementary in Omaha, where their daughter Stacy is a speech language pathologist.

Stacy recruited her parents to attend the afternoon event and go from classroom to classroom as their Christmas characters because the school had been having a difficult time trying to find a Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Bruce has so fully embraced the magic that comes with dressing up as Father Christmas that he has been wearing the iconic red-and-white hat almost everywhere he goes around the region in December.

That has led to him becoming a social-media sensation thanks to Cedar County Veterinary Services in Hartington and Family 1st Dental in Wausa.

The doctors at each of those businesses took photos with Bruce when he recently visited them because of his definitive Santa look and posted the pictures on their Facebook pages.