Santa Gets A Makeover To Broaden His Appeal At An Ethnic Shop, A Man In Red Suit, White Whiskers - And Kente-cloth Scarf.

EDGEWATER PARK — He wore an outrageously bright red suit, and his white curly whiskers bobbed when he laughed. But this Santa Claus was different from many seen in the malls and the jolly old man depicted in most books.

Sandra Evans said she opened the Santa Shop, at Park Plaza in Edgewater Park, "to fulfill a community need. . . . There was no place for African American people to take their children to an ethnic Santa."

Evans, the proprietor of the 5-year-old Panache Ethnic Collectibles and Fine Art store, which features African items, said she decided to create a Santa Shop next door because "children of ethnic background need to have a Santa that looks like them."

Evans recruited William Anderson, an associate minister at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Burlington City, to play the role. Besides the traditional Santa garb, Anderson donned a patterned kente-cloth scarf to remind children of their heritage.

"So much that children see and hear today makes them frown. . . . So anything I can do to bring joy into their lives I will gladly do," said Anderson. So far, he's listened to the wish lists of more than 50 children, many of whom want Batman toys and black Barbies.

"A 4-year-old girl, Marissa, said she just wanted to give me a big hug," he said, eyes twinkling.

For Bria Jackson, a Willingboro girl who will celebrate her first birthday Dec. 27, Friday night was her first visit to Santa. But for older children, who have sat on the laps of white Santas in the past, there could be new questions for parents to wrestle with after a visit to the Santa Shop.

Tosca Bynoe, a Willingboro woman whose three children lined up to greet Santa that same night, was preparing her response.

"I'm still pondering the right explanation. . . . I'm not going to say there's a black Santa for black kids and a white Santa for white kids because that would introduce a prejudice and a whole train of thought I don't want to introduce," she said.

David, 4, Brandon, 5, and Brittany, 7, licked their candy canes as they waited for their mother to finish her thoughts, out of their earshot. They had already asked Santa for Godzilla toys and a doll.

"I think I'm going to tell them the world is so big that we need a lot of Santas and a lot of different ones, including Chinese, black, and white," said Bynoe, a lawyer with the state Attorney General's Office.