“There are actually some organizations doing drive-ins,” says Santa Lance Skapura, whose home base is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Skapura is also no slouch in the jolliness department – his answering machine apologizes for not getting to your call because Santa is busy working on a flux capacitor to help him travel around the globe on Christmas night. “You bring your car, you bring your children, and you pull in like a drive-in movie. Santa does 20 minutes onstage in front of the car, and the sound is piped in via a small FM transmitter right into your car stereo.” Skapura – “Chief Executive Kringle” for You Sleigh Me, a fraternal club of Pittsburgh- area Santas, who also moonlights as a theater director – came up with his own solution to these challenging times: personal visits and contracts. Santa Lance is spending most of his holiday season individually visiting clients’ houses, but not before they sign a tour rider jam-packed with every stipulation short of a bowl of brown M&Ms. The contract demands strict mask-wearing, social distancing, and otherwise safety addendums. It’s a far safer environment, but all the legalese in the world doesn’t deliver a family’s biggest holiday desire. “We had to keep the children safe and still manage to get those family photos everyone wants,” says Santa Lance. “This year, I’ll be behind a piece of plexi, talking to the children. And when it comes time to shoot the picture, they’ll be in front of me, and I’ll basically be photobombing them.”
classes on craft (Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus University... several, actually.) and to invest in red suits that can run up to $5,000. However, if you talk to enough Santas, you realize that they don’t do this job for the money. It’s the interaction with people that fuels them. For some in the reindeer- jockeying game, making an impact on a child’s life is too much to give up, so they are forging ahead despite the risks, rethinking the traditional Christmas visit with social distancing in mind. “Some of the malls are putting Santas in plastic bubbles,” says Salinsky. “Some of them actually have shields that go up.” He’s right. Check the website for your local shopping center or holiday festival – chances are that they opted to still do something in person rather than scrap the entire celebration. Some have erected Popemobile- quality plastic walls or are sticking Santa behind a cheerful cottage window. One town in Nebraska even hoisted Saint Nick up into a deer stand to greet children from a distance. But, as expected, it’s awkward and a far cry from holidays past. “It certainly won’t be the same,” the Slate magazine Santa laments. Fear not, plexiglass shields are not the limit of Santa’s holly jolly creativity. We’re talking about a man who went from hammering together wooden trains and stitching dollies in a sub-zero workshop to delivering 21st- century tech under Christmas trees. Santa is an innovator.
American Consequences
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