By Charity Springer
Don’t believe in Santa Claus? A trip to North Pole, Alaska, might change your mind. There lives someone legally named Santa Claus. And he’s a member of Lord of Life Lutheran, an ELCA congregation in North Pole. And yes, Santa is “a jolly man” with a white beard.
Although portraying Santa Claus is not his day job, and he rarely dresses as the well-known character, the time Santa did he was told much more than what the children wanted for Christmas.
As children sat on Santa’s lap, they told him things they wouldn’t tell anyone else. “Children would sit on my lap and tell me things that they won’t tell their parents, teachers or doctors. But they told Santa. They trust Santa,” he said. If something a child told Santa did require action, a sheriff would be around to respond to the situation.
Because of this experience, Santa began to do child advocacy. “I used to be in law enforcement. I started to do child advocacy because I saw children” fall through the system, he said.
He said portraying Santa Claus became a tool to help some of the 2 million children who are abused, neglected, homeless and put up for adoption. He explained that one out of 37 children falls into these groups. “If they haven’t been adopted, they are stuck with nothing. I went on tour to all 50 states and talked with senators and governors about these problems.”
Santa said he doesn’t spend much time explaining his name to people. “You can believe whatever you like. I just (strive to) be the loving person that I am and hope that that resonates.”
Not only does he play Santa Claus and serve as a child advocate, Santa is a monk in the Order of the Anam Cara. “When I show up in my monk robe, it’s just a little bit different,” he said, adding that these different roles provide different ways to advocate for others.
He’s also very involved in his town of North Pole, a suburb of Fairbanks. He just ended a year as the volunteer president of the North Pole Community Chamber of Commerce.
Listening to children can be “heart wrenching,” Santa said. “But it’s a blessing, and everyone who comes in to see me always gets a blessing. It’s a lifetime filled with happiness, peace and most of all love.”
Because of Santa’s advocacy in North Pole, many children are now receiving support services they otherwise might not have received.
“Again, a lot of it is heart wrenching, but it’s worth it,” Santa said.
Charity Springer is a recent graduate of Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, and lives in Dorchester, Neb.
