Louie Bowen knows which one is the real Santa. But she isn’t telling.
Not the families lining up at the mall on Thanksgiving weekend, not the daycare directors who book her every December, and certainly not Wake Living or its readers. A handful of very special people are in on the secret, she explains, and that handful is staying small.
“I never tell anybody which one is the real Santa, because they all have magical qualities,” she says. It’s also, she adds, a matter of security. “You know how we have Air Force One for our president? See, we have Sleigh One for Santa.”
Those Santa-protection plots in the movies — Louie cites the one with The Rock — are “based on real stuff,” she insists, though nothing of the sort has ever touched her Santa. (For the curious, her record is spotless. “Santa’s security is so good.”)
To most of the children she meets, Louie is simply Mrs. Claus. To the families, schools, malls, and businesses around the Triangle that want a visit from the big man, she’s something closer to his booking agent. Louie keeps a core roster of about 10 Santas busy each season, branches out well beyond that when the calendar fills, and decides which Santa goes where. Though Santa is magical, she points out, “he can’t make it everywhere at one time.”
Cheek to cheek and spectacles to spectacles, Mr. and Mrs. Claus — and their alter egos Louie Bowen and her husband Michael — prove the magic works best as a team.
Ask for Louie’s official title and she remains security conscious. “I just tell everybody that I’m Mrs. Claus,” she says, “and I help book Santa.”
The season starts sooner than most people realize. Plenty of her Santas are already at work by the end of August, posing for family portraits (“We have a lot of Santas that look really great for photographs,” she says). Mall Santas typically make their first appearance over Thanksgiving weekend. Then come the daycare visits, the corporate events, the private parties, and the special appearances that run right up to Christmas Eve.
“I’m telling you,” Louie jokes, “Santa’s a party kind of fella.”
Before the Bonnet
Long before Mrs. Claus, there was Cheeri Lu.
Louie owned Hughie & Louie’s Costumes, Magic and More in Raleigh for 20 years, and before that she worked in children’s entertainment — or, as she carefully rephrases it, she used to help Cheeri Lu the Clown. She spells it out: C-H-E-E-R-I, L-U, “and you dot the I with a heart.”
Louie is a familiar face around the Triangle, where she partners in cheer with various Santas to bring the twinkle. Cary Magazine’s Hoppy Holidays, held annually at Bond Brothers, is just one event on her list. Contributed photo.
Cheeri Lu had a good run. Then, as Louie tells it, the vampires showed up.
“All of a sudden, everybody was in love with vampires and then got scared of clowns,” she recalls. “So clowns lost their jobs overnight.” She lets that sit for a moment. “It’s a true story. A vampire can bite you. A clown makes animal balloons. But kids got scared of clowns, and everybody fell in love with twinkling vampires.”
So Cheeri Lu, bless her heart, found a new way to be useful. She started helping Santas, and she eventually handed that work off to Louie.
Louie hasn’t put on the red nose in about 15 years, partly because there are still kids out there who remember Cheeri Lu, and partly because that’s how life goes. “You grow out of one character or situation into another one,” she explains.
The new character kept much of the old job. Mrs. Claus leads the sing-alongs, performs a little magic, and keeps the room entertained until Santa arrives. She’s also the soft landing for the children who aren’t so sure about the bearded stranger in the big chair.
“Look, I’m a little scared of hairy men too, okay?” she says. “If I didn’t know Santa personally … I’m just saying …”
But “a good-looking woman from the South Pole — a little plump, because she’s been cooking good and eating good” — is another story. “What kid can resist that?”
(Yes, the South Pole. Southern women always cook good, Louie reasons, “so he had to go to the South Pole to get me!”)
She refers to herself as Santa’s CEO: the Cookie-Eating Other. And while she’s happy to let him have the starring role, she has a few notes on the arrangement. He handles the reindeer. She double-checks the list, makes sure he looks good, and keeps him well fed.
“All that comes from me.”
The Matchmaker
Finding the right Santa for the right room is where Louie’s real work happens, and it starts with personality. Specifically with a Santa’s willingness to slow down and take time with each child.
From there, she gets granular. Some of her Santas grew up in particular county school systems and know the teachers by name, which never fails to stun the students. Some rooms call for a quiet, refined Santa; others can handle one of her way-out-loud Santas. Some clients want a real beard. Some don’t.
After spreading joy for many years as the owner of Hughie & Louie’s Costumes, Magic and More, and with a background in children’s entertainment, Louie has perfected her role as CEO: Santa’s Cookie-Eating Other.
Over the years, many of her Santas have also embedded themselves in particular neighborhoods, where everybody knows him as Santa. Louie protects those placements the way a family protects a routine. “Kids remember him,” she explains. “They know Santa.”
“I’m a matchmaker,” she says. “A cook, a matchmaker, a bit of everything. Good tidings and cheer for everyone, I’m telling you.”
Occasionally the match turns out better than even Louie could have planned.
About 15 years ago, she was working an event alongside one of her Santas when a little girl stepped up to see him. She had just been adopted and didn’t speak any English. When the girl began talking to Santa in her native tongue, her mother gently stepped in.
Santa held up a hand, asking the mom to wait just a moment. Then he answered the little girl in her own language.
“Look, I get chills now thinking of it,” Louie says. She was so moved, she recalls, “I just sat right there and had a tear come right down.”
It wasn’t the only time. Another of her Santas knew sign language and was, unbeknownst to Louie, ready when a hearing-impaired child came up to greet him. “There’s just so many magical stories,” she says, “so many magical happenings.”
Santa Is Not Dead
Not every happening is magical. Some are just unforgettable.
Louie considers it a blessing that she plays a part in preserving a child’s world of wonder.
A week or two before Christmas, daycares often book Louie and Santa as a pair. Mrs. Claus arrives first to warm up the crowd with songs and a little magic, while Santa pulls in 20 to 30 minutes later for the big surprise, usually to a rousing chorus of “Here Comes Santa Claus.”
One year, at a daycare near an intersection in Raleigh, Louie had the children outside in the play area, singing and dancing. Her Santa that day drove a bright red car that he dressed up for the holidays. One of the kids spotted him coming. (“Once you see him, you can’t unsee him,” she explains.) The whole group started shouting and waving. Santa waved back.
And as he made his turn, he got T-boned.
“All the kids said, ‘Oh, no!’” Louie recalls. As luck would have it, an ambulance was right there, and the sirens started up.
Then one child said what everyone was thinking. “Santa’s dead!”
“I said, ‘No. Santa is not dead. Santa’s not dead!’” Louie says.
She herded the children indoors and called in another Santa, who was, in her words, “a little bit late, but he was not dead.” When he arrived, she seized the moment. “I said, ‘See Santa? See Santa’s magic. Nothing’s going to happen to Santa.’”
Everyone involved turned out fine. “But,” Louie says, “you could not have written that into a movie.”
Contributed photo
Hoppy Holidays is Cary Magazine’s annual festive celebration at Bond Brothers Beer Company. Featuring free beer, photos with Santa and Mrs. Claus, kids’ treats, and a dog‑friendly atmosphere, this free, family‑friendly afternoon of beer, holiday fun, and community spirit welcomes readers and new friends alike.
Hosted by Cary Magazine at Bond Brothers Beer Company, the seasonal gathering returns for an eighth year to blend holiday cheer with local craft beer and community fun.
Thursday, December 10
6–8 p.m.
Bond Brothers Beer Company
202 E. Cedar St., Cary
Your first beer is on Cary Magazine! Please consider bringing a new, unwrapped toy for donation to the 2026 Toys for Tots campaign.
Keeping the Magic
Staying in character isn’t always about slapstick. Every so often a child tells Mrs. Claus that what they want for Christmas is a mom or dad who has passed away. There’s no script for that, Louie says. You can’t know how you’ll answer until you’re standing in the moment. What she aims for is a response warm enough, and loving enough, that the child can hold on to it.
Demand, she says, holds steady year after year, simply because there are always new children coming up. The pandemic brought Facebook Live visits and masked Santas (“I hope we don’t ever, ever do that again,” Louie admits), but the appetite never went away. “Santas right now have it good,” she says. “There’s still people who believe in magic.”
Underneath it all, she knows, is something older than any mall set. “As long as we have hope and love in the United States, we’ll always have a high demand for Santa.”
The secret has held even at home. Louie’s own children had no idea their mother was any of these characters, and once they were old enough to figure it out, the house rule took effect: If you don’t believe, you don’t receive. Now her granddaughter, who calls her Dee-Daw, has noticed that the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Mrs. Claus all seem to pass through Grandma’s house.
“Dee-Daw,” the little girl tells her, “your house is magic.”
Ask Louie why she keeps doing it, and the answer comes quickly: Life should always be exciting. Not everybody has a party in their life, she says. Kids especially can’t make one for themselves.
“I bring the party, right? I bring the happy. I bring the love. Because if you don’t bring it, who’s going to bring it?”
Today’s kids, she adds, are growing up in a world that’s turned upside down, where people can’t give them solid answers on questions that never used to be questions at all. What they need is a moment of certainty — the feeling, as she puts it, of “You know what? This old woman loves me, and she is so funny.” A hug from Mrs. Claus, a word from Santa, something they can feel and remember.
Divinely Inspired
As for who brings the magic for her, Louie says it’s the kids, the grandkids, “and the old man.” Louie calls her husband Saint Michael, “because he has to live with me, and therefore that’s what makes him a saint, right?”
Their marriage, she says, is grounded in love and faith. “So we know that there’s always hope, there’s always love, there’s always tomorrow, and that we’ll always have each other.”
That faith shapes how she sees the children who climb up to meet her. Life isn’t treated as sacred the way it used to be, she says — back in the ’50s and earlier, when people truly cherished the very old and the very young. “It makes a huge difference when someone knows they’re cherished.”
Her beliefs have steered her work, too. Louie hosts a weekday morning show on GoMix Christian Radio, a career she never saw coming. She landed in radio, she says, only because the City of Raleigh was threatening to fine her $500 a day over a sign ordinance, “but that’s an old story.” (She won, by the way.)
Clown’s helper, costume-shop owner, radio host, Santa’s booking agent, Louie says she’s no subordinate Claus — she’s a supportive Claus.
As for which Santa is the real one, it is Mrs. Claus who knows.
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