When Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves and the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons need Christmas spirit, they call Rick Rosenthal. All year round, he brings his own brand of holiday magic to corporate boardrooms, private parties, and professional sports stadiums across the Southeast.
He is also an Orthodox Jew.
For Rosenthal, 72, the path to becoming Georgia’s most prominent Santa began with a joke in the 1960s, when he decorated his cheerleader friends’ Christmas trees with miniature bagels. His transformation into a full-time Santa came through tragedy. After losing both parents within 18 days of each other in 2011, Rosenthal grew out his beard during shiva, the Jewish mourning period. The beard came in snow-white, leading to an encounter at Home Depot that would change everything.
“I heard this little voice go ‘Daaady! Daddy!’” Rosenthal recalls to JTA. A six-year-old boy had spotted him among the garden supplies. Playing along, he whispered to the awestruck child, “Don’t tell anyone you saw Santa buying tools for the elves in Home Depot.”
“As a result of that moment, I realized this is what I need to do all the time. People need Santa all the time, and I have that look,” he said.
Before donning the red suit, Rosenthal’s religious journey took him from Conservative Judaism through two decades of secular life, finally leading to Orthodox practice in his 30s. While he may be one of the few Orthodox Jews spreading Christmas cheer professionally, the man once known as Abraham Claus finds perfect harmony between his faith and his festive alter ego.
“It’s amazing how many Jews I get to teach in my school. As a Jew, it’s easy to do because it tells us that we’re supposed to be a light unto the nations,” he says.
Now Rosenthal runs the Northern Lights Santa Academy, featured on Amazon’s “Santa School,” where his curriculum includes everything from contract law to costume design. One year, he even brought in a German-Jewish rocket scientist to explain how Santa could theoretically deliver presents worldwide in one night.
In Atlanta’s Merry Hills neighborhood (yes, that’s its real name), Rosenthal’s house sits among streets called Reindeer Drive and Christmas Lane (also amazingly true). It’s an oddly fitting address for a man who has found purpose in bringing joy and smiles to thousands of young children year round.
