'Someone who looks like you:' It's more than a red suit for this Santa and Mrs. Claus

As a new family waits outside the decorated home of Mr. and Mrs. Claus, which sits comfortably in a subdivision north of Fort Caroline Road, Santa turns to his wife.

"Mrs. Claus, are you ready?"

"I am, Santa," she says. "Are you ready?"

He nods. "Yes."

Mrs. Claus opens the front door, and in come Grace and Larry Williams, along with daughters Laila, 3, and Vivian, 1, who wear holiday dresses and shy smiles.

Behind an ornate desk, in a room with a Christmas tree and floor-to-ceiling curtains, Santa waits, a reassuring smile behind his gray beard.

Laila is shy, awestruck, as she walks slowly toward him, holding her mother's hand. Vivian clings to her father's chest.

That shyness, at first, is normal, Mrs. Claus says later: "It can be intimidating to meet the guy in the big red suit."

Soon though, after some songs and chatting, the girls are smiling, taking selfies and swapping high-fives with the Clauses, jingling green jingle bells, reaching for the ornaments on the tree.

The Williamses said they wanted their daughters to meet this Mr. and Mrs. Claus, in particular, because Laila recently noted to her parents, for the first time, that her father is Black and her mother is white. So what is she?

Larry Williams told her: You're both. You can be anybody you want to be.

That's one reason why the family came to see this Santa and Mrs. Claus, who are Black.

"We wanted to show her that she can be anything she wants to be," Larry Williams said. "And Santa can be whoever she thinks he is."

This is America: Santas of color are the most magical part of my Christmas experience. We need more of them

'What you need him to be'

Shawn Coley and Natasha Spencer-Coley have played Santa and Mrs. Claus for the last two years. They've been at Art Walk downtown, at a food truck event, and at schools and private events. Now they offering "Selfies with Santa," for $75, during which families come to their home for a chance to take photos and make memories.

They're both Jacksonville natives. He's 51, graduated from Lee High and then spent 13 good years in the Marine Corps. He now works in IT at the post office.

She's 44, went to Stanton College Prep, then worked for various nonprofits. She now does cooking and crafting lessons online, from home (search online for Life at Coley Manor and Christmas with the Coleys).

Spencer-Coley loves the holidays and all their traditions, and acknowledges she's "over the top" with her enthusiasm for Christmas (her house, for example, has three decorated trees).

Shawn Coley isn't as enthusiastic, perhaps, but he does his part. After all, he has on the red suit, the cap and the black boots, and he's grown his graying beard out to appropriate Santa length.

"Do you mind if I share a little?" Spencer-Coley asks her husband.

"Go ahead."

"Are you sure?"

He nods.

She shares: She came from a financially stable family and never lacked at Christmas. He grew up in public housing in Hollybrook Homes, the last of five children; Christmas presents weren't always guaranteed, and the holiday wasn't that much different from any other day.

Spencer-Coley explains: "He had built this kind of shell around 'Christmas isn't important' because of what he had to go through as a child, right? Whereas it was important to me, and I had to convince him that he was worth it. You can be celebrated. It's OK to love Christmas. It's OK to participate."

For Shawn Coley now, playing Santa Claus is more than just putting on a red suit and ho-ho-hoing every once in a while.

"It was hard for me, coming up as a kid, to relate to Santa. But to see someone who looks like you, you have something in common. That also helps in the belief of a kid, believing in Santa. They can relate: He looks like me."

He chuckles, telling of a girl who told him that she'd seen lots of white Santas, and then here he was, a black Santa. How does that work, she asked him? Does that mean there are lots of different Santas?

"I said, 'No, it doesn't. Santa appears to you, as what you need him to be.'"

It's not just kids, either, who are happy to see a Santa who looks like them.

"We just did a 76th birthday cake delivery, as Santa and Mrs. C," Spencer-Coley says. "And to see her light up, because she's never interacted with a black Santa — it was really powerful, the level of joy to create that memory."

A Christmas list

At the Coleys' house, the Williams family and Mr. and Mrs. Claus have sung songs: "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," "Jingle Bells," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

They've taken photographs, and they've read through "The 12 Days of Christmas."

"I don't know why they made me look so old in that picture," Mrs. Claus says.

And they've gone through Laila's list of requested presents. It's short, but a pretty good list.

"A bicycle," she says. "Blue."

Santa, who seems to have some inside information, nods. Can do.

"And a baby brother," Laila says.

"A baby brother?"

Santa chuckles. "I can only do so much."

But it might work out. Grace Williams is going to have a baby boy. And he's due on Christmas.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Black Santa and Mrs. Claus spread Christmas cheer in Jacksonville