Come Christmastime, it seems that nothing short of Santa can top a real, live camel. Rugged yet regal, the dromedary dominates every living Nativity it steps into.
That’s true at Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular. Its manger scene is an actual menagerie, with six sheep, a donkey and three camels, the tallest of which is Ted.
Ted, whose handlers believe is either 24 or 25 years old, has been a Christmas Spectacular standout for 20 years,
“Ted is a rock star,” declares Jill DeForte, the show’s vice president of production, who joined the Spectacular four years after Ted arrived.
“He’s the benevolent king of the camels,” she tells The Post. “He’s just a good soul, if you can say that about a camel. And he’s clearly the leader because of the sheer stage presence he brings to the show.”
During this year’s dress rehearsal, DeForte says, Ted was making his stately way to the manger, looking ahead with “great majesty,” when he suddenly turned to look at the audience.
“He had this gigantic grin on his face,” DeForte says. “It was sort of him saying, ‘Well, I’m home now. I’m here!’ ”
No wonder Ted gets the royal treatment. Along with fruit smoothies, he enjoys daily massages — by his handlers, not the Rockettes. When he’s tired, or has the day off (Radio City rotates its animal and human stars), he’s taken home to the upstate animal sanctuary where Midtown’s Dawn Animal Agency recruits all of its four-legged stars.
“The animals — the camels, the sheep, the donkeys — are cast just like people,” says longtime Dawn employee Todd Evans. “They have different temperaments. Those who get stressed easily stay behind in the fields, and freeload off the working ones . . .
“They’re funny — camels,” Evans continues. “They have a reputation for kicking and spitting, but they’re lovely animals. If you’re good to them, they’re good to you.”
The Christmas Spectacular had its first living Nativity in 1933, one year after the show opened in Radio City. But it wasn’t until 1972, sources believe, that live animals joined the cast.
Westchester’s Bronxville Christmas pageant, on the other hand, has featured live sheep and donkeys for at least 50 years. Like Radio City, it depends on Dawn to choose and deliver them.
And although Bronxville’s three wise men, shepherds, Mary and Joseph all work for free, the animals don’t.
“The sheep are $600 apiece, the donkey, $750,” says Susanne Shoemaker, who headed the pageant, with her husband, Paul, for some 20 years. “The camel was $1,500 — and worth every penny!”
‘Ted is a rock star. He’s the benevolent king of the camels.’
The camel, an older female named Azuri, arrived in time for the Nativity’s centennial, in 2014. A stunner in her gold-threaded bridle, she seemed to know instinctively what to do.
“When she arrived at the manger, Azuri knelt down, as if on cue,” marvels Lisa Sorensen, who’s seen just about every pageant during her 56 years in Bronxville. (At 2, she says, she looked into the cradle and cried, “That’s not the baby Jesus, that’s a lightbulb!” — and there’s been a doll in there ever since.)
Her animal-loving husband, Dan Johnson, was a shepherd the year Azuri joined the pageant, and Sorensen says the camel was smitten with him. The feeling was mutual.
That next year, the pageant raised enough money to bring the camel back, “and she rushed right over to Dan,” Sorensen remembers.
This year’s Nativity, alas, won’t have a camel. Evans says Azuri is retired — “She’s an old lady!” — and the pageant people have yet to find a child-friendly replacement. Clearly, Radio City, whose holiday show runs through Jan. 6, has dibs on Ted.
Then again, says Ruth Walter, who’s headed the pageant for the last four years, “We’re much more hands-on than Radio City! The children run up and pet the donkey and the sheep afterward, and feed them carrots.”
Bronxville’s Nativity doesn’t always go smoothly, pageant people say. Donkeys have been known to wander off, taking Mary with them. One year, the donkey stepped on Joseph’s robe, and when he tried to walk, Joseph fell down the hill.
In 2005, the donkey was stuck in traffic. “We had a thousand people there on a beautiful mild evening, and we waited and waited, but the donkey didn’t get here,” Shoemaker says. “A brass quintet kept playing reprises, over and over. Mary had to walk to Bethlehem.”
This year’s pageant, the 104th, will start at 5:30 p.m., Christmas Eve. It unfolds on the front lawn of the Reformed Church on Pondfield Road, which will close between Midland Avenue and Meadow Street for an hour as hundreds gather to watch and sing.
“Some people have been coming all their lives,” Shoemaker says. “One of our kings has been coming since he was 3, and now he’s 90.
“There’s always a little something that goes wrong, but we think that’s part of the charm.”
