CANAL WINCHESTER – It was the hair.

Even though his wife Ginny Etienne had been portraying Mrs. Claus for three years and had suggested he take on the role of Santa Claus, it was the hair that kept Tim Etienne from doing it.

The thought of bleaching and dyeing his dark hair white and growing a beard only to dye it as well didn't appeal to the 55-year-old Canal Winchester resident.

That changed a year and a half ago when his wife asked him to go to a Santa convention in Branson, Missouri for her 50th birthday.

Now, three weeks before Christmas, he's sitting in a chair at a salon in Westerville with bleach in his hair and beard, leaning over a sink, as his stylist, Stacia Cohagan, rinses the chemicals down the drain. All the while Ginny teases him about having more hair care products than she does, and now Tim's O.K. with that.

It’s all part of the job for a dedicated Santa Claus performer. That’s what Tim is now, and he describes this character he wasn’t sure about taking on as “magic.”

Christmas always played a big part in Ginny Etienne’s life.

“She warned me,” Tim said with a laugh talking about when the couple first started dating. “’She said, ‘Hey, I’m a little Christmas crazy.”

He didn’t think it was too bad. After all, how many decorations can you store in a one-bedroom apartment?

That’s when he found out she stored about 25 totes of Christmas decorations at a friend’s house. It's easy to spot the couple’s home in their Canal Winchester subdivision. It's the one trimmed with all the lights, lawn decorations, wreaths, a two-person sleigh next to the garage and seven Christmas trees.

Ginny admits that her childhood Christmases had a more “secular“ focus compared to the more “sacred” focus Tim experienced.

“It was always about giving,” Tim said of his childhood Christmases. “And I guess that’s one of the things that I really enjoy with the Santa life, is that I can really talk year-round about how you should have that heart, that giving heart, year-round. It shouldn’t just be one day. It should be every single day of your life, and if everybody was like it just would be a better world.”

It was his faith that eventually brought Tim around on the idea of portraying Santa Claus just weeks before leaving for the birthday trip to Branson.

“I was so afraid to do it because I had never changed my hair…. it just wasn’t what I wanted to do,” Tim explained. “And honestly God got a hold of me and said ‘You can use this as a mission field to be able to talk to people about how Santa prays to the one and only.’ And it was like ‘Get over yourself.’”

Three weeks later he found himself in a Santa suit for the first time walking in a parade with 800 other Santa Clauses from around the world on an 85 degree Fahrenheit day in Branson.

It’s been something of a whirlwind since then, with modeling jobs for Zulily, visits to nursing homes and preschools, appearances in parades, handing out presents at office parties, leading Christmas karaoke at a local restaurant, Skype conversations with boys and girls around the world, TV appearances for the charity Wagons Ho Ho Ho and lots of squirming children on his lap.

Some of those children are at Kings Island’s Winterfest where this year the couple is the amusement park’s official Santa and Mrs. Claus.

There have also been smaller but impactful moments.

Moments like the elderly non-communicative dementia patient he met while shopping at a local store. After the encounter, Tim later learned from the woman’s son that at one time she had a large collection of Santas, but had to give them up when she entered the nursing home. “She walked up to me and she said, ‘How are you, I haven’t seen you for a while.”

“It had nothing to do with me personally,” Tim said of the interaction. “It was what she remembered, and what brought joy to her. So there are so many ways that just by having this persona I’m touching people in a way that they just open up and to me. That’s pretty amazing.”

Then there was a moment last year at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium’s annual Wildlights that Tim says is the most incredible moment of his life.

At the zoo, a woman walked up to Tim in his Santa suit, handed him a card, hugged him and told him “Thank you for always being there for me.” He thanked her, sat the card aside, took a photo with her and her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and kept the line moving.

“That night I came home and I hadn’t read the card and I opened up this card and I just started crying,” Tim said as he teared up telling the story a year later. When Ginny asked what was wrong he told her she wouldn’t believe the story.

Five years ago the woman had been given a cancer diagnosis. She wrote that she came to the zoo with her family that night with the hope of being able to come back the next year. She made it to the next Christmas, again with the hope of making it one more year. By the third year, she was in remission. By the time she met Tim, she’d been cancer-free for three years. She wrote to him that it was the yearly visit to Santa at the zoo on the anniversary of her diagnosis that gave her and her family the hope to keep going and get through the tough times.

“The gift that lady gave him that night was both humbling and a constant reminder that it might be in the Home Depot with the girl who thinks she’s seeing Santa, and it might be at some big swanky event, but you never quite know the impact you’re going to have on the person that’s right in front of you,” Ginny said.

“It’s magic,” Tim added solemnly, his voice cracking from the emotion of the memory, but with a twinkle in his eye. “That’s all it is. It’s just magic.”