One entertainer stands high as Vegas' ambassador of the holiday spirit. And with Wayne Newton opening his Holiday Show at Harrah's, you just know it's that magical time of the year. It sure is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Since Bob Hope's death Wayne has also served as the main ambassador for the USO and, more often than not, he's entertaining our overseas troops during the Holiday Season. This year he's Home for the Holidays. As Wayne rehearsed this week I got to chat with him about holidays past and present, and Wayne graciously allowed our own Scott Doctor to go backstage for the final dress rehearsal photographs.

RL: Let's talk about Thanksgiving and the Holidays. What do the Holidays mean to you as an entertainer who will work through them, and as a married man with family?

WN: I have worked through them practically all of my life. In some instances, it is another day on the job. The other side you have to be aware that some people who don't have children, or children that are of age, they want to come to Las Vegas, and you need to cater to that too. It does bring home what it is that the holidays are about. When we do our show we do probably 70% traditional holiday music, and then intertwine it with 25% of stuff that people would want to hear. It isn't 100% holiday show, but a conglomerate of a lot of things mixed into the spirit of Christmas.

RL: What does Christmas mean to you?

WN: Christmas is one of the saddest days of my life when my brother told me there was no Santa Claus.

RL: But you must have dressed up as Santa for your own family.

WN: I have never done that, but I have hired people to do that for me.



RL: Do you think you may become Santa for one moment for this show?

WN: I don't think so, but it is interesting because ...when my older daughter was 5 or 6 we hid out on the landing upstairs and it was one of my pilots and he put on the Santa outfits and we pretended like we were checking the North Pole and all of the time zones to see where Santa was and then he walks in and ate the cookies and he started going he-he-he and my daughter looked at me and I said Santa has got a problem tonight. The Christmas show is going to be a ball. I actually include my wife Kathleen, and my 4-year-old daughter, Lauren for a minute, so we're all family there on the stage. We bring a few penguins from our Vegas ranch and have them walk on stage. Last year at the Flamingo in the casino floor theater I actually brought one of my horses, but we can't do that at the Harrah's theater. Three stories up is a little tough to get a horse so we won't be doing that. We will have a very festive show and of course it truly brings out the kid in me, it is one of my favorite times of year and I think that mainly because the people are starting to realize the true meaning of Christmas and people are nice to each other and it should last the whole year, not just that one segment of time. We open for Thanksgiving and actually go till Dec 23rd. Then we open again the day after Christmas and we go through New Years, but when we open on the 26th we will not be doing the Christmas show, we go back to the regular show.

RL: No time this year to squeeze in a quick trip to the troops?

WN: No, we were supposed to go to Iraq last month, but because of the election there we decided it was probably not a good time to go because of all of the turmoil. So, the other thing that we have to recognize is that we bring all of these performers in and we actually draw the security away from places where they should be so we have to be aware of when we go and to make sure that we don't put that much more of a burden on our military. So this year's Holiday trip will be Jan or Feb.

RL: Have you ever done an actual Christmas Day show with the troops?

WN: Yes, I have. In fact, we were in Afghanistan on Christmas I think 2 weeks after our coalition forces had freed their country. So we try to go Thanksgiving to Christmas anywhere in between there to bring a touch of home.

RL: Do you have one joyous happy memory of one holiday visit to the troops? Do you get behind the line and serve turkey?

WN: Oh yes, as a matter of fact, we were in Iraq last Thanksgiving and I took Paul Rodriguez, Neil McCoy and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and Miss USA and myself, and we were all in line serving turkey to the troops and this one soldier looks at me and says, 'you have no idea how thrilled we are that you are here.' I said well thank you and I talked to them about how thrilled we are to be there for them. He said, 'I am not sure you understood what I meant; I meant if you weren't here, they would be feeding us camel.' So that is one I will never forget.

RL: Wayne, let's go back to holiday season and the early days of you entertaining downtown when you were a teenager. Now, 47 years you have spent in this city, but what was Christmas like yesteryear in Vegas as compared to what it has become today?

WN: Well, back then Christmas was a time when all the showrooms closed down. Vegas wasn't big enough to support keeping them open. You could shoot a cannon off and never really hit anybody. So, the showrooms were closed down under the pretense that they were doing maintenance or cleaning, but the truth was that there was a lack of people. Then on the 26th the town started to jump again and we would go through New Years and then it would cool off again and go through the middle of January in terms of people coming here until about April. Those were terrific time but not like today where the town is large enough by itself to support the number of performers that are here. It was almost a thing where you could do an Christmas show years ago. People just wouldn't come out; they would stay home with their families. But now, not only do we have tremendous amounts of traveling people visiting Vegas for the holiday season but a lot of locals come out too. It has all changed for the good.



RL: Wayne what 's your holiday greeting for everybody this year?

WN: My greeting is that I wish everybody what I wish myself and that is happiness, health, and love with your family.

RL: Do you have turkey on Thanksgiving?

WN: Yes we do.

RL: Do you do any of the cooking yourself?

WN: Not a chance. Having come here so young. I can't even boil water. When I did that scene in the 'Vegas Vacation' movie where I am cooking spaghetti, I was laughing the whole time because people will come up to me and ask about my particular recipe for spaghetti and I can't cook at all and I never have. If I had to cook to survive, I would have starved a long time ago.

RL: Now are you like every other American man on Thanksgiving where you take 40 winks?
WN: I do, and I must tell you that not only do I look forward to Thanksgiving, but also I look forward to the day after because of all the leftovers.

RL: On Christmas day do you do gifts around the tree early morning or do you start Christmas eve at midnight?

WN: We start Christmas eve at midnight, but since the baby has come along we open her gifts, not the ones from Santa obviously, We open those family gifts early before she goes to bed, then the adults open theirs and then we open her gifts from Santa on Christmas day.

Go see Wayne's show at Harrah's, sing along to your favorite carols and Holiday songs, and be sure to wish him "Happy Holidays".