Here Comes (Black, Spanish-Speaking Or ASL-Fluent) Santa Claus

ALPHARETTA, GA — It took a pandemic for Santa and Mrs. Claus to fully join America’s national conversation about race and equality.

Black Santas, Spanish-speaking Santas and Santas fluent in American Sign Language have always been around for people who know where to look. But mall Santas have mostly been white, say Walt Geer and Sarah Blackman, an Alpharetta, Georgia, couple whose virtual Santa business, JingleRing, is exploding in the coronavirus pandemic.

Geer and Blackman aren’t new to the Santa business, thrown into the path of a juggernaut by the coronavirus. With the kinds of Santa experiences they’ve provided to malls and sporting goods stores suddenly altered in the pandemic reality, they brought Santa into the 21st century — and not just by leveraging some of the best tools on the internet to make children feel like they’ve just stepped into Santa’s world at the North Pole.

JingleRing offers virtual chats with Santa, guided by an elf who takes kids through all the essential stops — among them, the mailroom where their letters are received and sorted, the reindeer stable and, of course, the toy factory. But for virtual Santa to be magical to children, he had to be authentic.

Kids want to share their Christmas dreams and wishes with a Santa who looks like them, and “for families of color, it doesn’t really exist at a retail level,” Geer says. “We decided, ‘We’re not only going to build JingleRing, we’re going to take that story of the North Pole around 150 to 160 years, to reflect today’s culture.’”

It turns out there’s been a strong, unmet demand for diverse, bilingual Santas all along. African American Santas have long been relegated to AME churches and community centers, and the professional Black Santas have trouble finding paid gigs.

“Most Black Santas don’t get to do this,” Blackman says.

Their big problem now is finding enough Black and African American men to supply the demand in an industry in which pre-pandemic opportunities were limited.

Geer and Blackman are also behind Santa’s Fantastical, a whimsical indoor, all-ages holiday experience in Atlanta, and PictureU, which is behind the images for events at professional sports arenas and stadiums, concert tours, fairs, festivals, rodeos, pro golf tournaments and, of course, Santa experiences at the mall.

The #MeToo movement has come to the North Pole, too. It’s about time that Mrs. Claus — who, like women around the globe, surely keeps the trains running on time — got equal billing, Blackman muses.

That bit of insight came from Chicago-based Brookfield Properties, which owns and manages about 170 malls and shopping centers across the country. Its focus groups showed that “a lot of people” want Mrs. Claus to be a central figure in their children’s holiday memories.

The pandemic is hitting every sector of the U.S. economy, but for out-of-work actors who’ve lost not only their income but also their creative outlets, it’s been especially hard. Dozens of women, many of them idled Disney performers and community theater actors, leapt at the chance to become one of JingleRing’s Mrs. Claus characters.

“We do these meetings with our Claus performers, and there have literally been 100 to 150 Mrs. Claus performers on some of our calls,” Geer says. “They say, ‘You don’t understand the devastation in the greater community. We aren’t able to practice our craft.’ This is giving opportunities to performers and their families.”

Research into what families want in Santa experiences revealed something else: Christmas is a Christian holiday for many Americans, and they want Santa to be less secular than the typical retail Santa and more like the third century monk St. Nicholas, who was admired for his piety and kindness. Retail Santa is secular.

“The church is very important to families who wanted a faith-based option,” Geer says. “We looked for opportunities to present Santa the way a family wants.”

Geer and Blackman founded Fantastica Labs 13 years ago. 2020 was going to be the year Santa’s Fantastical, one of its themed experiences, was going to blow up big in a planned expansion to more places.

Then,“in March, our lives changed,” Geer says.

The 2020 growth plans wilted. At the time, no one knew how long the pandemic would last or how it would affect the Christmas traditions cherished around the world. Geer recalls wondering: Now what?

“Sarah said, ‘It’s a walk in the park. What if we did a virtual Santa experience?’”

The growth of videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom in the first months of the pandemic proved to the couple the world was ready for virtual Santa experiences. And they had a hunch that kids who have grown up in an era when different experiences are just a right swipe away would believe that Santa uses the same technology.

“Today’s children have grown up on video,” Geer says. “They won’t think it’s not normal. They’re used to FaceTiming — and now with online school, it’s a natural thing for children.”

JingleRing offers kids more than just a chance to hop on a video call with Santa, as their work-from-home parents might with their employers.

“This is beyond Zoom,” Blackman says. “We’ve built something magical. It’s really cool.”

Geer and Blackman expect JingleRing to thrive long after the health crisis has passed and Americans start having more in-person experiences. Even absent a coronavirus pandemic, a visit with Santa at the height of the influenza season isn’t every family’s idea of Christmas magic. And not every kid relishes the idea of sitting on a stranger’s lap.

“It definitely could be better,” Blackman says of the virtual visits.

Their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles can tag along for the visit with Santa. They get a keepsake, downloadable video. Parents and other family members who are stationed away from home in the military can pop in. And virtual Santa seems to know more specifics about how bad and good they’ve been than mall Santa ever did.

Kids typically understand the characters they meet in the mall are only helping the real Santa, who is busy at the North Pole getting ready for his trip around the world in a sleigh guided by flying reindeer.

But the Santa they meet in the cloud is the real deal. This Santa knows things.

“Santa can mention that the child is doing great in soccer, but it might be nice to help Mom more,” Blackman says. “Santa has some real intel. Kids know they’re talking to the real Santa.”

JingleRing video chats are available in multiple languages, 14 countries and feature Santa performers from all over the world.

This article originally appeared on the Alpharetta-Milton Patch