Carleton Bryant The Washington Times - October 22, 2008, 03:58PM

It’s your typical wrongful termination lawsuit but with a twist — of peppermint.

Tysons mall fires Santa. Santa gets lawyers. Lawyers hit mall with bag of coal.

SEE RELATED:

The Santa in this case is one Michael Graham, who portrays St. Nick for a living — at $175 an hour. (Yes, that’s his real beard. And his belly shakes just like a bowl full of jelly — well, Jell-O but that doesn’t rhyme with belly.)

A good wage, to be sure, but remember it’s a seasonal job. Not much call for a jolly fat man in red wool suit around Independence Day, except maybe on Fire Island.

Still, you have to wonder, if Santa makes $175 an hour, how much does the Easter Bunny make?  Is there some kind of salary scale for imaginary characters?

I’ll bet the Tooth Fairy makes a lot of coin — there’s no season for bad teeth, especially in England.

If I were going to get paid to be an imaginary character, I’d be the monster under the bed. They’d pay you NOT to appear. Sweet!