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This story originally appeared in the Dec. 2, 2002 edition of the News & Record:

GREENSBORO — Don't even think about it, Jan Rumbley says. Don't even make jokes.

Rumbley was asked, what if one Christmas, just one Christmas, he failed to erect Big Santa, the giant mechanical elf who waves to passersby in front of Friendly Center? What would happen?

If Santa failed to appear, Rumbley says, he and the rest of the center's maintenance staff would disappear. Fired! Rumbley's bosses at Starmount Co. take Big Santa very seriously and what he means to Greensboro's Christmas spirit.

"People in Greensboro would be crushed if we didn't put him up," says Rumbley, who has been associated with Big Santa since 1977, and is now the center's maintenance director.

With that in mind, a six-man crew from Starmount Co., Shining Light Electric and Turf Service Co., began work at 7:30 a.m. Friday. They hauled Big Santa, in two parts, on a trailer from a storage building behind the post office to a grassy place at the center's West Friendly entrance. The men carried the lighter lower half of Big Santa and placed him halfway between the shopping center's sign and a willow oak.

A crane lifted the upper torso — Big Santa's bodacious belly, shoulders, head and the hidden motor that works his right arm — into place.

Crew members attached cables to Big Santa and grounded them by pounding long iron stakes into the ground. They attached an electrical hookup from the motor to an extension cord. The crew applauded when Big Santa's right arm waved for the first time this Christmas season at 9:08 a.m. He will wave every day from 8 a.m. to midnight.

The last task was wrapping an approximately 8-foot-long rubber belt with a plywood buckle around Santa 's midriff. First, the crew used Handi Wipes to remove a year's worth of dust from the belt.

Matt Comer, a Turf Service worker, came in on his day off to help put Big Santa up.

"It just gets me in the Christmas season to do this," he said.

Starmount Co., which owns the shopping center, first realized in 1971 how much Greensboro residents had come to adore Big Santa. By then, he had become old and worn and the center decided to retire him.

The day after he normally would have appeared, the telephone started ringing at the center. "Where is he?" People were outraged when told that Big Santa had been sacked. The center's executives ordered the maintenance staff to get Big Santa out of storage fast.

Another reminder of the affection for Big Santa came in 1981 when several joy-riding teenagers took dead aim at Big Santa in a car. They knocked him over and inflicted serious damage.

The next day, the maintenance staff summoned area sculptor Ogden Deal, who had done some patching on Big Santa 10 years earlier. Deal made temporary repairs, enough to get the big guy back on his feet to finish the Christmas season. Afterward, Deal trucked the statue to his studio in McLeansville and made it as good as new.

Greensboro was outraged at the vandalism. Arrests were made, punishment levied. A mother of one of the teenagers was so ashamed of her son's actions that she wept.

A few years later, late-night pranksters cut the cables that keep Big Santa on his booted feet. Down he went. But no damage was done, and the maintenance staff had him upright the next morning.

Yule seasons since then have been peaceful. As needed, Rumbley's staff paints the coat, freshens the red cheeks and lubricates the mechanical parts.

The center's staff knows Big Santa still ranks high with the public because as soon as he goes up, calls start coming in. The callers are arguing and betting with friends.

They ask, "How tall is Big Santa ?"' (He was thought to be 12 feet tall, but Billy Wyrick, who supervised the crew putting up Big Santa, pulled out a tape measure Friday. Big Santa stands 13 feet tall.)

"How long has he been up?"' (This is the 42nd Christmas.)

Yet, so much remains a mystery about Big Santa. How old is he and where did he come from? The information died in 1966 with Cap Coffey, the center's legendary publicist in the early years. It is known that Coffey bought Big Santa — used — in the late 1950s and introduced him to Greensboro during Christmas 1959.

"Sometime ago in conversation, I heard this Santa was made in Pennsylvania and that he was one of two, but I don't know about this for sure," Wyrick said.

Big Santa has appeared on a Friendly Center Christmas ornament and a jigsaw puzzle. He also was a key figure on wrapping paper for the shopping center.

For generations who grew up since the 1960s, Big Santa has become a Greensboro Christmas tradition — much the same way the Pilot Life Insurance Co. Nativity scene and the downtown Christmas lights were to generations during the first 60 years of the 20th century.

After World War II, long lines of cars backed up on High Point Road waiting to enter the grounds of Pilot Life at Sedgefield. Families had come to ride slowly by the statues of the wise men, camels, livestock and manger with baby Jesus. The scene spread across the lawn in front of the Gothic buildings that made Pilot Life's headquarters look like a college campus. The drive out to Sedgefield became a Christmas ritual.

The same was true for going downtown the Friday night after Thanksgiving. That was when the city turned on the Christmas lights over the downtown streets. People made the trip twice that day — first to see the Christmas parade and then returning at dark for the lights.

The parade fizzled out in the early 1970s. When it resumed later that decade, the day was switched to Saturday.

As for the Christmas lights, the snowflakes attached to utility poles downtown, which still go up the Friday after Thanksgiving, have been making money for Duke Power for more than a week this year.

The Pilot Life Nativity scene moved years ago to Greensboro College, which rescued the statuary after Pilot Life left Sedgefield and moved downtown to join its sister company, Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co. Cars creep by the scene in front of the campus on West Market Street. But the lines don't seem as long as in the old days.

Before this Christmas season ends, many youngsters will pose in front of the Big Santa while their parents focus cameras.

Then he will vanish. The Friendly Center management has a nonnegotiable tradition. The rest of the center's decorations can remain up until New Year's, but not Big Santa. He returns to storage the day after Christmas. Even if that day falls on a Sunday, a crew must come in and do the job. It can't wait until Monday.

"When Christmas is over," Rumbley says, "he's gone."

Just like the real Santa.