Shipyard worker by day, ‘Santa Vic’ by night: How he became Santa Claus in Hampton Roads

It’s a Friday night in early December and Santa is having a rough day.

Santa Vic looks around the room he’s rented for his Movie Night on the third floor of an office building in downtown Norfolk.

It’s already 5 p.m. The space is still its drab-white-walled-conference-room self when it needs to be a winter wonderland. Children and their parents will begin arriving in an hour.

Santa’s father-in-law struggles with setting up a projection screen at one end of the room.

Another of Santa’s helpers, mother-in-law Patricia Bryant, busies herself behind a table toward the back, pouring kernels into a popcorn machine and placing chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies on a tray. Across the room, another helper hangs a backdrop of a snow-covered cabin with a smoking chimney behind Santa’s red plush settee for photos. Near the door, Santa’s sister and niece spread a tablecloth over a card table.

“The kids will walk in. They will be greeted by someone,” Santa says, his eyes falling on his niece. “They will be greeted by Gabby. You’ll say, ‘Hello. Welcome. What’s your name? Please, have a seat.’ ”

Santa’s niece nods.

“When are they getting here, again?” Bryant asks.

“Soon,” Santa says, still wearing a black T-shirt and the loose pants he threw on after he got off work at the shipyard.

“Too soon.”

Santa realizes all of his helpers are too busy to set up the chairs and begins to unfold them into rows.

“Has anyone seen my Bed Bath & Beyond Twisted Peppermint spray?” Santa asks, riffling through a wagon of supplies. “I hear from other Santas online that it’s a good spray to have in your arsenal, so you’re not smelling like Brut or something.”

Victor Manuel, 52, during the day, is a manager at a shipyard but, after hours, becomes Santa Vic.

Santa Vic is a newcomer to the Santa-for-hire game, but he’s been overbooked this season. He does video chats with kids around the country from his North Pole Skype station — his converted Portsmouth garage. He’ll take a lunch break from work, throw on his suit and visit a daycare or elementary school.

He brings joy to children but has discovered his own joy in witnessing belief awaken in astonished young eyes.

___

In 2017, Manuel dressed as his favorite hip-hop artist, Ice Cube, for Halloween. He grew his beard to match the scruff the rapper regularly wore in the early 1990s.

As Manuel’s facial hair grew, people started remarking: You know who you look like, right?

His brother, Nic, sent him a post from a Facebook group showing different Black Santas from across the country.

“I said, I think I can do that,” Manuel recalled.

Nic said his qualifications go beyond mere looks.

“He’s the nicest guy,” Nic said. “Santa Claus fits him.”

In the fall of 2021, Vic Manuel logged into Amazon and ordered a red and white velvet suit. He tried it on immediately once he got it.

“And,” he said, taking a pause, “I mean, yeah, I looked like Santa.”

But that wasn’t enough. He couldn’t go halfway and risk looking “like someone’s uncle” who threw on an old suit. Santa Vic wanted to be the Santa of children’s imaginations. He kept ordering suits until he found the perfect fit.

“I kind of liked the way I looked,” he said. “And I said, ‘OK, I’m gonna give it a try.’”

That December, he was standing in the entrance of a daycare, nervous and prepping himself to walk into the room of children. Then the doorbell rang.

A girl was being dropped off. She looked at Santa and her face lit up. She hugged him and Manuel instantly became more comfortable as Santa Vic.

As he grew into the role, Manuel realized he needed a backstory.

Once a boy asked why Santa’s sleigh wasn’t parked outside.

“It needed a front wheel alignment,” Santa Vic said.

At another daycare, the kids burst into song: “... Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen / But do you recall / The most famous reindeer of ...”

Manuel realized he didn’t even know the names of his reindeer.

“That’s something that Santa should know.’”

He went online for advice from other professional Santas. Now when kids ask him how Santa travels from the top of the globe, Santa Vic explains:

“Santa doesn’t drive his sleigh except on Christmas night. But Santa has made a lot of good friends over the years who give him rides. I got a ride from the North Pole to Michigan, from Michigan to New York, from New York to ...”

To, eventually, Tidewater.

___

In mid-November, Santa walked into Abraham’s Academy daycare in Norfolk, holding a stack of Christmas books.

“Hello! Hello!” he bellowed as he came through the door, ringing a little gold bell.

About a dozen 2- to 4-year-olds ran and skidded to a stop at Santa Vic’s knees before gazing upward with wide eyes.

“Santa?” a girl asked.

“Yes,” Manuel said. “Yes, how are you, sweetheart?”

A boy inquired, “Why are you so big?”

“Because I eat a lot,” Santa said with a laugh.

“Do you have presents?” a little voice called from inside the fidgeting cluster.

“Not today. I have books in my bag today. Do you mind if I read you a story?”

Then they sat around him as he plopped into a rocking chair and opened ”Pop-Up Peekaboo! Christmas.”

After the story ended, Maurice Latham watched as his son, Chase, walked up and sat on Santa’s lap and whispered in his ear. Chase asked for a cell phone.

It was Chase’s first time seeing a Santa.

“This generation,” Latham said, “they still believe in Santa, which I think is great.”

Santa Vic loves visiting daycares and schools, but he most enjoys video calls. Last December, he averaged four to five video chats a night, five nights a week, fielding calls from Georgia, Texas, California and Nova Scotia, Canada. He’s had more requests this season.

He enjoys the “pure of heart” conversations even when the parents ask him to take on the role of a disciplinarian.

“If you’ve ever heard of or seen the show ‘Scared Straight,’ yeah well, some parents use Santa Claus in that same way,” he said.

Some parents contact Santa Vic because he’s Black and, to him, it makes perfect sense that a Black family or predominantly Black school would want a Santa who reflects their ethnicity.

Just the other day, Santa Vic saw someone’s comment on Facebook that the color of Santa’s skin should not matter. He wrote back that it “shouldn’t” but that “it does.”

“Everyone is telling me that they’ve been looking for a Black Santa, and can’t find one,” he said. “I’m trying to save the world. I’m trying. I’m trying to be everywhere.”

___

Around 6, the first kids and their parents start arriving for Movie Night, and Manuel retreats into a storage closet to get ready.

He is exhausted, but excited; he started work at 4 a.m. He slips into his red coat. His hands shake a little as he pushes back the fluffy white cuffs and pulls on white gloves.

“I want to do a good job,” he says. “It’s for them. I get nervous.”

He combs his salt-and-pepper beard.

Minutes pass, and his cell phone rings. One of Santa’s helpers lets him know it’s time.

The screams and giggles of 20 children and their talking parents overlap over the rows of chairs facing the movie screen.

The door to the closet at the back opens. Silence falls; the kids’ heads whip around.

Santa steps into the room.

“Santa!” the children whisper.

Santa Vic moves toward the children and, again, is rushed by a swarm.

“Last year, you brought me a Barbie!” one girl says.

“That’s because you were a good girl,” Santa Vic replies.

“Santa?” one boy asks.

“Yes?”

“Can I give you this?”

The boy holds a bag of candy, offering it in outstretched arms.

“You’re going to make Santa cry,” Santa says, taking the small present.

Santa takes a seat toward the back of the crowd. The lights dim, and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” starts. Santa’s “ho ho ho’s” and “ha ha ha’s” rumble at Snoopy’s antics and every joke.

Credits roll, and Santa Vic speaks.

“Did y’all like that?!” he says. “I loved it!”

After the second movie, “Frosty the Snowman,” the overhead lights turn on, revealing a room full of smiles.

Jessica Nealey leaves with her blond-headed son, 4-year-old Harlan.

“That was sooo cool!” she tells him. “You finally got to meet the real Santa.”

Harlan’s blue eyes glow.

“Yeah!”

Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8139, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com