Yesterday I blogged about the Fort Worth Bad Sundance Square Santa Leaving Kids Crying.
Overnight that blog post accumulated a number of page views I have not seen previously in so short a time frame.
Apparently the Fort Worth Santa Scandal is of interest to a lot of people. I hope this does not hurt the number of downtown Fort Worth's booming post Thanksgiving shoppers.
Oh, that's right. I forgot that downtown Fort Worth is a ghost town on the busiest shopping days of the year, due to being the only downtown of a large American city with no downtown department stores.
I have blogged about the downtown Fort Worth post-Thanksgiving ghost town multiple times, in bloggings such as Having Fun Looking For Black Friday Shoppers Today In Downtown Fort Worth.
Apparently a large number of people have been appalled by the Fort Worth Santa Scandal. I wonder if the Downtown Fort Worth Inc. people have taken measures to make sure downtown Fort Worth never breaks the Santa seeking hearts of any little kids ever again.
I suspect nothing has been done. Fort Worth has a long storied history of doing nothing about things about which something should be done, which would never happen in a civilized American city.
I have been asking people in other towns if the Santas in their towns behave as badly as downtown Fort Worth's Bad Santa.
The replies have pretty much been universal disgust regarding Fort Worth and the town's Santa. However, more than one person in more than one town has told me that in various ways their town's Santas require a fee or donation of sorts before Santa will let a kid sit on his lap so has to hear the kid's Christmas wishes.
When I was a still believing in Santa kid, my parental units would take me and my siblings, annually, to our favorite Santa, located in downtown Sedro Woolley. That Santa was jolly and he gave you a big candy cane. There were other Santas in the Skagit Valley, back then, none charging a fee, except, maybe if you wanted the Santa photographer to snap a photo.
This morning I asked my little sister, the mother of David and the twins, Ruby and Theo, what the Santa situation currently was in Tacoma and the rest of Washington, as per her experience with her kids.
My sister replied with the Santa picture you see above of Ruby and Theo a bit unhappy to be sitting on Santa, while brother David looks away bemused. That photo is from four years ago.
Along with the above Santa picture from four years ago my little sister also sent the below Santa picture from this year's visit to the Tacoma Mall Santa.
Regarding the current Santa status in the Pacific Northwest, based on my little sister's experience, in part, she had this to say....
The Tacoma Mall Santa was awesome, he spent lots of time talking to the kids, knew all about toys, etc, but he died this year. The new one was ok. He looks great, but wasn’t as chatty. Still, when he picked Ruby up he commented that she’d grown since last year and said some other stuff the kids thought was awesome. They still believe in him, you know. What irks me is that every damn holiday event now has a Santa and I’m like, people, my kids think he is real, how is he everywhere?!? The gold standard Santa in these parts is the downtown Seattle Nordstrom. We’ve made it there a few years. Beautiful set up. And that Santa rotates, one year the day we showed up he was Asian, another he was black. The kids don’t seem to notice or care, which cracks me up. I can see how great it is for families of color.
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Sounds to me like my old home zone still treats kids right when it comes to Santa expectations.
I wonder what my little sister would have done if she'd run into a downtown Fort Worth type Santa situation, with her kids in line, eager to see Santa, then told Santa was closed for the night, heading home on his sled to the North Pole?
My little sister is a lawyer.
The result probably would not have been pretty for Santa or the city that did that to her kids....
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