Beard Traps Abseiling Santa

The holiday season didn't get off to a great start for one luckless Santa Claus in England, the BBC reports. As he abseiled inside a shopping mall as part of its Christmas lights switching-on ceremony, his beard got caught in the rope and he was left dangling for 30 minutes while the ceremony continued below. A mall spokeswoman says Santa was unharmed. "He could have just taken his beard off and let himself down but he was such a professional and he didn't want to let the children down," she says. (More Santa Claus stories.)