Fator opens his ‘living room’ for annual Christmas show

Terry Fator already had the halls decked and the decks cleared before this week’s launch of the fourth edition of his Christmas show at The Mirage.

“We’ve already got our house decorated, I’m almost done Christmas shopping,” Fator reported even before Black Friday. What else could he say to rub it in?

“I love to wrap. … I’ll put on a Christmas movie and sit there and wrap and wrap.”

Shopping ahead leaves the ventriloquist plenty of time to focus on “A Country Christmas,” as it’s called for a second year, running through Christmas day.

A living-room set pays tributes to the TV variety specials of Fator’s youth, and his puppet characters sing their own variations on Christmas classics ranging from “Run Rudolph Run” to a Vegas version of Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song.”

But just as his regular show makes annual changes, so does the Christmas edition. This year Fator is introducing two original songs. One is “a Christmas song about the military.” The other is based on letters to Santa Claus found in the attic of his puppet character Emma Taylor.

The letters reveal the wishes of generations of Taylor women, including a request for “whoever was the teen idol of the time,” from Bing Crosby to David Cassidy to One Direction.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.