The holiday is still six months away, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford Jr. has already started growing the beard that will have become a snowy, chest-length cloud by Christmas Day, when he assumes his annual role of Santa Claus at Egleston Children’s Hospital. It’s one of several locales he will visit during the season to dandle children on his knee, distribute presents, and maybe even perform a marriage ceremony as a “Victorian-ish Father Christmas.”
“It takes about five months to grow it out right,” he said, grinning, and looking more like Ernest Hemingway than Kris Kringle at this point.
