“When I was five years old, I would go with my mother to midtown Manhattan,” Eric Drooker says, “and there’d be a bearded Santa Claus ringing a bell. And then we’d go back downtown, and I’d see another Santa—but this time a skinny one. I think that’s what tipped me off. If you’re living in a small town or suburb, I suppose there’s just one Santa in the shopping mall. But for a city kid, once he notices that there is more than one Santa, he starts to wonder: Who’s the real one?”
- This week’s cover artist, Eric Drooker. To see this week’s cover and a slide show of more New Yorker covers featuring Santa: http://nyr.kr/rueKFP