More Scrooge than Santa. Salary: $50 per hour 

Your first day at the job as Santa, a little kid pulls off your beard and pees all over your leg. You accidentally release a few choice words, and before you know it, you're banned from playing Santa at this mall. Oh well. Now you'll have to try the mall across the street.

Quiet Claus. Salary: $100 per hour 

Your agent sets you up with a Santa gig at a retirement home in Florida. You walk in to the community room, big bag of presents in hand, and greet the retirees with your biggest "Merry Christmas!" No one looks at you. A nice older woman grabs your sleeve and says, "You'll have to speak up."

Smelly St. Nick. Salary: $150 per hour 

You get a Santa gig at the local zoo and are surrounded by live reindeer. Unfortunately, "Blitzen" got into some kids' leftover bean burrito and now he's blitzen all over the place. It smells so bad you can barely breathe, and families run away in droves. The reindeer looks at you as if to say, "It wasn't me."

Santa with Stability. Salary: $175 per hour 

You have a stable gig at the local mall that pays well. You make enough money at the end of the season to pay off your car and have some leftover cash for a little holiday shopping spree. That's right: two discount DVDs at Target. It's a very merry Christmas indeed.

Bringing the Holiday Magic. Salary: $300 per hour 

You get hired by one of the richest celebrities to entertain his children at Christmas. You do so well he makes you the Santa Claus of one of the biggest Christmas parades in the world. You're now traveling through midtown Manhattan on a giant Papier-mâché sled-float, waving to hundreds of thousands of screaming fans with dancing elves doing cartwheels all around you. Not a bad day at the office.