It’s 80 degrees in September when Mebane Ham answers the door in full red-velvet regalia.

Her floor-length smock is cinched in back with a bow.

Her cuffs are trimmed in white fur.

Her cap, edged in lace.

Her ears, evergreen, dripping with Christmas tree earrings.

Her face is flushed and radiant.

Or maybe she’s just burning up.

“Here, this is for you,” she says, handing me a candy cane adorned with a ribbon while begging me to take extras back to the office. “You can’t buy just one these things.”

Sometimes, it’s hard to tell where Mebane Ham ends and Mrs. Claus, as in spouse o’ Santa, begins.

Twinkly blue eyes?

That’s 71-year-old Mebane, especially post-cataract surgery.

Same goes for Mrs. Claus, who is also 71, give or take a few centuries.

Rosy face and ready laugh? That’s Mebane, once the extra blush is applied. It’s also Mrs. Claus, considering the windburn that comes from living at the North Pole.

A propensity to hug people? That’s Mrs. Claus. And most definitely Mebane.

A fondness for telling it like it is, sparing no adjectives?

That’s Mebane, for sure, when she’s off the elfin clock.

But no way is that her Mrs. Claus, who’s a safe haven for children, a protector of young ears and hearts.

“That’s how I portray her,” Mebane says with a steel thread in her voice.

She — Mebane, that is — first believed in Santa when she was a kid growing up on St. Andrews Road, which was then a dirt road, in Greensboro’s Irving Park.

Her mother was a stay-at-home mom. Her dad was a salesman. Every December, the family went downtown to take in the department store windows that were dressed for the holidays.

Somewhere in her home in the Dunleath Historic District, Mebane has a picture of her and her siblings with Santa.

“As the youngest of four kids, I learned real quick that the longer you believed, the longer you got stuff,” she says with a hearty heh-heh-heh.

She grew up believing in Santa, without paying much mind to Mrs. Claus, who was a minor character, at best, in the Christmas stories she heard.

It wasn’t until she’d moved away then came back home to help care for a mom with dementia that she got the idea that she could be Mrs. Claus, or at least find the Mrs. C in herself.

It helped that her friend, Eloise Hassell, asked in the early aughts if Mebane would take her place as a seasonal Mrs. Claus at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Friendly Center, where she told stories during a weekly children’s hour.

At first, Mebane winged it, conflating the story of Little Red Riding Hood with the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears — and adding a Christmas twist.

“The parents looked at me like, ‘What kind of drugs are you on?!’”

The next time, Mebane read from a new Christmas book for children. It went much better. After the story time, the kids asked questions. Mrs. C was quick on her clogs.

“What’s your first name?” they asked.

Merry, of course.

“Why are you wearing a wig?”

You should see what riding in a sleigh does to your hair.

“What do you do at the North Pole?”

Who do you think teaches the reindeer to fly? Or shows Santa how to use the GPS?

“How long have you and Santa been married?”

Hundreds of years. Or at least it feels like that sometimes.

“Why aren’t you wearing a wedding ring?”

Oh, my gosh! I took it off to bake cookies with the elves last night and forgot to put it back on.

Later, Mebane recounted the ringless story to a friend who then donated her deceased mom’s gold wedding band to the cause.

“She would love knowing that you’re wearing it for this reason,” the friend said.

After a while, word got around about the married lady who dressed in red and could be hired by the hour.

Mebane — who by then ran her own business devoted to helping small businesses and nonprofits do media and community relations — booked more gigs as Mrs. C.

As opposed to Renaissance or a Victorian figure, she fancied herself a 20th-century character, like the ruddy Santa who appeared in Coca-Cola ad campaigns from 1931 to 1964.

She took her jolly self to Christmas parades in Greensboro and Charlotte, where she rode on floats with the Mister.

She popped into office parties.

She strolled the sidewalks, doling out candy canes at the Festival of Lights in Greensboro. If a kid dropped a candy cane and it broke, Mrs. C. asked for it back and replaced it with a new stick. Cracked candy canes, she said, made excellent reindeer chow.

If a child started stomping candy canes in the name of reindeer nutrition, Merry/Mebane made it clear the reindeer had enough food — so cut it out, kiddo.

Mama Christmas don’t play. But she does have a soft heart.

At retirement homes, Merry/Mebane started Christmas carols for the residents, whose memories were in various stages of repair. They took over after a couple of verses. Some had not spoken in months.

She built gingerbread houses at country-club family events. 

In Winston-Salem, she held small audiences with children with auditory issues. Santa, with his booming voice, could overwhelm them.

Mrs. Claus was softer, more approachable. They came to her.

“By the end, we were down on the floor, reading and playing. They were making eye contact with me. To do that, and see the difference you can make . . . ”

Merry/Mebane’s voice trails off.

Like the seasons themselves, Christmas has changed, and Mrs. Claus has changed with them.

Budget cuts prompted a health-care agency to nix her visits to retirement homes.

Ditto the chain bookstore.

But Merry/Mebane, who also volunteers at the front desk of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, keeps popping up, at an hourly rate much cheaper than that of a typical Santa. Pay equity, it seems, has not reached the North Pole.

“I don’t make thousands of dollars doing this,” says Merry/Mebane. “I do this because I like it. I get my warm jollies out of this.”

She makes 10 to 20 appearances a year.

She still does parades.

And office celebrations.

And the Festival of Lights, where kids literally come running for her.

She still visits the kids with special needs in Winston-Salem.

Last year, she volunteered at a children’s home in Crossnore, which had been hit by flooding from Hurricane Helene.

Benefactors paid a locally owned bookstore, Scuppernong, to supply wrapped, hardcover Christmas books for the kids. Merry/Mebane delivered Where’s Waldo? to the children, read with them, encouraged them to be good people.

Here, at her kitchen table, within view of a quote tile that says “If you’re not a bad influence, I’m afraid we can’t be friends,” she allows that Mrs. Claus is another side of worldly, wise-cracking Mebane.

“Mebane Ham cares, is concerned and worries,” she says, her blue eyes growing dewy under frosty curls.

“This is something I can do about it. It’s kindness.”