A Small Town Alaskan Santa
Christmas in Tok, Alaska is pretty real to kids - they drive through the town of "North Pole" every time they make the shopping trip to Fairbanks 4 hours away. But sometimes Santa needs some help, even in Alaska!
We debated rescheduling the Tok Elementary School Christmas concert. After all, how many people were going to brave the -50 degree weather to come to the school to see Santa and watch their kids sing Jingle Bells?
But since the weather didn't show much improvement for the forseeable future (10 days is the foreseeable future, according to weatherunderground.com,) we decided to go ahead with the show.
Turns out, 146 people braved the weather to come to the concert; not record attendance, but certainly respectable for a town of 1500 people and a K-12 school of 120 students.
The families made it in, but 30 minutes before the show, Santa (also our school maintenance man) called to say he was stuck in a nearby village working on broken pipes. What do you do when Santa can't make it? You look around the room for the nearest unsuspecting gray haired man who could possibly do the job. In this case it was our school IT guy, working on setting up the live stream of the concert. To our surprise, he said yes! Not your typical jolly old elf, we had our doubts, but in a pinch, anyone guy dressed up in a red suit with a white beard would be better than nothing!
After the songs had been sung, it was time for Santa's grand appearance. All of the kids sang "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" at the top of the their lungs, and in walked substitute Santa, ringing the handbell he had found at the bottom of the costume box. This proved to be just the ticket to break the ice with all of the kids who were a bit hesitant, understandably, to sit by a stranger and spill their innermost desires for toys. Every kid in the room wanted to go ring that bell, and our last minute Santa came through in magnificent style as he chatted with the kids and answered all of their questions about magical flying reindeer and squeezing through chimneys. (You see, kids up here know how big a chimney is, and they know that there's almost always a hot fire at the bottom of one in Alaska at Christmas time.). But somehow Santa managed to convince them of his Christmas Magic.
With less than 30 minutes' notice, our IT guy came through for the kids in our little town with flying colors, if not flying reindeer. Even the parents couldn't guess who Santa's last minute helper was, and it was a grand success.
In a small town like Tok, you do what you have to do to make things work, even if that means stepping out of your comfort zone to keep some little kids' Christmas dreams alive.
