Today, Santa Claus gets a much-needed vacation.

But Jim Begley, who has played the jolly gift-giver for eight years, said the time off isn't always welcome.

"It's kind of a black hole," he said. "You want it to go on, but then you want the break, too."

Starting around Thanksgiving, work picks up for those who don a red suit to play Santa Claus at holiday parties, photo shoots, parades, Christmas pageants and other events.

Mondays are normally pretty slow, they say. But double and triple bookings on the weekends can add up to more than 40 Santa appearances a year.

It makes for a hectic holiday season, Santas say, and when Dec. 25 rolls around, there are a lot of relieved Mrs. Clauses happy to have their husbands home.

But beyond a possible Christmas in July campaign, Dec. 26 means dropping the suit off at the dry cleaners and not putting it back on for 11 months.

"Sometimes you find yourself, you walk in the mall and say, ‘Hey, where's my chair?" said Nicholas Trolli, owner of www.invitesanta.com.

The season's end is bittersweet, said Chris Wolski, who has played Santa in North Georgia for 10 years.

"It's all about the kids, the kids and the reaction," he said. "They look at you like you're some kind of a god. It's just the expression on their face is like, ‘Wow, this is Santa.' "

Begley, who holds a doctorate in "Santa Clausoligy" from a California Santa school and is a popular Gainesville Santa, said 40 events a season certainly cramps his calendar, but when it's over he misses "seeing the awe in the children's eyes and the belief that this is magical."

The one welcome event for many Santas?

Shaving the beard.

Begley, who starts growing his each year in August, has a naturally white beard and doesn't have to dye his whiskers. Every Christmas Eve after his last appearance, he goes into the bathroom as Santa and comes out a freshly shaven man.

"And then my grandchildren get to see me as grandpa," he said.

Wolski takes the first barber's appointment he can get after Christmas - this year it's Dec. 28 - to get his beard shaved. He starts growing his on Memorial Day Weekend. It isn't too bad for the first few months, he said, but October is pretty miserable.

"The beard is long but it's not all white, so I tend to look like either the Wolfman or some homeless guy," he said.

Trolli, or "Nicholas Santa" as his caller ID reads, is also president of the Amalgamated Order Of Real Bearded Santas, an organization of more than 1,700 men who shy away from synthetic whiskers.

He said not all Santas have the luxury of trimming their beard every year. Some look like Saint Nicholas year-round.

"Most times, to get the beards to grow 12 inches, it takes a couple of years," he said.

Begley and Wolski said there was no shortage of demand for Santa this year.

But Trolli said that nationally bookings for Santas were down by about 25 percent.

"If you measure it by the dollar, yeah the work is down," he said. "If you measure it by the joy, the work up."

The Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas has asked its members to do more charity events this year. Those, Trolli said, are the most fulfilling gigs.

Last year when a soldier in Iraq posted an online listing looking for a Santa to visit her children on Christmas, Trolli bid on the job, placing $0 on the fee line. When the soldier e-mailed him to ask for a price, he told her that if she could serve her country in Iraq, he certainly could visit her children on Christmas.

So he got the local fire department involved and pulled up in front of the soldier's house with four fire trucks.

"When I jumped off that fire truck, the little boy exclaimed loud and clear, ‘It's the real Santa!.' There's nothing like that," he said. "It just shoots you right in the heart."