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Awestruck by Santa, 4-year-old Cosmo can’t remember the toys he planned to request.
“Hot Wheels and a monster truck,” his father reminds him.
Beckham, 5, wants a jeep “for Haven and me.” Haven, his younger sister by a year, would like “100 necklaces.”
“You guys are beautiful,” Santa tells twin sisters in red plaid dresses. “I bet you are smart too.”
The same scene plays out at thousands of malls, community centers, and parties this time of year. But on the first Saturday of December at the Haven Farm event venue in Knightdale, there is one striking difference from other Santa visits. The man dressed in red is Black.
Stafford Braxton, who plays Santa in Knightdale, is also the founder of Raleigh-based Santas Just Like Me. This is his 12th holiday season holding Black Santas events around the state and at the Neiman Marcus at Tysons Galleria in McLean, Virginia.
A professional photographer by trade, inspiration struck for the business idea in 2011 when he was taking family portraits with a white Santa in Raleigh. As North Carolina grew more diverse, he saw demand for Santas of color rising. Braxton’s “posse,” as he calls it, is now up to nine Santas who will attend about 40 private and public events this year.
“People walk by and see us and get excited,” said Christina Geddie, the photographer working the Haven Farm shoot. “In Gastonia at the mall one time, a grandmother saw us. She went home and got her children and grandchildren in Christmas pajamas, and they came back that day to get photos.”
A Santa of color isn’t always so well received. People sometimes throw drinks from the second floor of the mall, others jerk their children out of line when they turn the corner and see Santa is Black, and plenty of bystanders scowl, according to Braxton.
“It’s a mixed bag of people. But when we did Gastonia years ago and I saw older white men in bib overalls come and get photographed with Black Santa with their families, I knew were we on the right track,” Braxton said. “We have Hispanic families, Asian families, white families. We’ve even had Muslim families. There are definitely a lot more people who embrace it than don’t.”
Customers at public events pay $30 to $75 for sets of digital images, with an average price of $49.95 for five pictures. Hosts of private events pay $500 to $750 an hour and guests take their own photos at no charge. Ten-minute Zoom visits with groups cost $75.
Braxton, who hadn’t donned his $550 red velvet suit since before 2020, stepped in at the last minute for the Haven Farm photoshoot because the night before someone rear-ended the Santa who was slated to appear.
“I do have a beard, but it’s not white,” Braxton said. So pinch-hitting meant shaving off his real facial hair and gluing on a white synthetic version. “Needless to say, my wife was not happy I shaved it off.” But he said the sacrifice was well worth it.
Brittany Macon Davis, her husband, and her children, who are Black, traveled more than an hour from Mebane to Haven Farm’s refined wooden barn. She was tired of her husband, Barry, complaining that the Santas the family visited in past years were always white.
“I want to show our children Black people are in all aspects of life,” Davis said. “I didn’t grow up like that.”
Mary Escobar is Latina, while her husband and their adopted son Cosmo are white.
“I think he’s at an age when exposure is beneficial. I want him to see men and women can be doctors and leaders. People of color can have magical roles,” she said. “It’s something we want to normalize for him. This is the opportune time when they are still so innocent.”
Perhaps a Black Santa is already normal for Simone Griffin’s children, Haven and Beckham, though she said they mostly have seen white Santas in movies. When she showed them a picture of the Black Santa on Haven Farm’s website before their visit, the children noticed part of his beard was gray but said nothing about the color of his skin.
Remy and Billy Overman, who are white like their daughter, booked a visit with the Black Santa at Haven Farm because the time was more convenient than the next day with a white Santa. The skin color didn’t matter, Remy Overman said.
“I grew up Amish, so any Santa is new to me, too,” she added. Many white families book with Black Santas, according to Haven Farm’s owner Leslie Brown.
Match the Fam
While Santas Just Like Me has the biggest network of Black Santas in the state, it’s not the only option. Hop the Black Santa, formed in 2019, features several Black Santas and a Black Mrs. Claus in and around Charlotte. Appearances this year include the University City Lights Festival in Charlotte and the Winston-Salem Ambassadors Holiday Parade. While other Black Santas have appeared at malls and churches over the years in North Carolina, they weren’t easy to find until recently.
“People want to see a positive Black image as often as possible.”
Stafford Braxton of Santas Just Like Me
The trendsetting Mall of America in Minnesota started featuring a Black Santa in 2016 and added an Asian Santa to the lineup in 2022. Old Navy sells pajamas depicted with Santas in its “Match the Fam” collection with three skin hues: beige, cocoa, and walnut. Online retailers offer numerous options for apparel, home goods, decorations, and Christmas cards featuring Santas of various origins.
Etsy, the online marketplace emphasizing handmade items, offers thousands of products depicting Black, Latino, Indian, Asian, and Native American Santas.
Some Americans have balked at the changing depictions of St. Nick. In 2013, then-Fox News personality Megyn Kelly decried Black Santas on her show, saying: “For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white.” Her comments went viral, not least because the jolly old elf is—and apologies to any kids reading this—fictional.
But others have embraced a more multicultural holiday, even before the trend grew over the last decade. In 1943, Blumstein’s department store in Harlem featured a Black Santa, according to the Harlem Neighborhood Block Association. And while many books and movies centered on white characters for centuries, more Black characters have emerged in holiday media in the past 20 years or so, Braxton said.
“When I grew up, I can’t remember any Christmas special that had Black people. I loved It’s A Wonderful Life. There was a Black woman in there. She was the maid,” Braxton said. “People want to see a positive Black image as often as possible.”
Finding Santa
Braxton wasn’t the only one who noticed the need for more representation back in 2011, while the Santas Just Like Me was not yet a fully formed idea. At Raleigh’s Crabtree Valley Mall, patrons were taking notice.
“A lot of minorities were asking if we were going to have a Santa of color,” he said. Braxton took the idea to the mall management. They said it was a good suggestion, but made no effort to act on it.
Later that season, he noticed an older Black man with a white beard walking through the crowded shopping center a few days before Christmas.
“I ran over to him and handed him my business card. I said, ‘I’m not trying to make you feel big or anything but you have a white beard and white hair and I’m kind of trying to find a Black Santa for next year,’” Braxton recounted. He asked the bearded man to reach out in January.
But Santa never called.
Five months later, Braxton photographed a wedding with a largely white guestlist–except for one man.
An older Black man.
With white hair.
And a white beard.
Braxton asked the groom to pass along his contact info and he finally met the bearded man in person. Warren Keyes was a regional actor and agreed to play Santa. At the end of the conversation, he threw Braxton’s business card on the table and revealed himself to be the same Santa-looking man from the mall.
Keyes said at the time he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t called back earlier, but it seems he was meant to play the role. Keyes’s wife mentioned to a coworker that her husband was going to start playing Santa, and her colleague said her husband, who was white, used to have the same side gig and gave them the red suit.
“They have that look that this is one magical moment.”
Warren Keyes on kids’ reaction to him as Santa
Having found a Black Santa, Braxton reached out to event venues. He approached the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham, which celebrates African American history.
“I took my portfolio to them and told them what I was trying to do and you thought I’d brought them a million dollars. It’s been the home of Black Santa ever since,” he said.
(Santas Just Like Me is booking photo opps for December 21 to December 24 at the center.)
“I didn’t know if I was up to the task,” Keyes said of his attitude when Braxton first asked him to play Santa. “Twelve years later, I think it’s a natural fit.” He visited Duke Children’s Hospital and Health Center and the Neiman Marcus in McLean, Virginia, the week before Christmas. At the latter, he presided over a marriage proposal and held his youngest visitor yet—a 9-day-old baby boy named August.
Santa on the Line
When your phone number ranks high on a Google search for anyone typing “Black Santa,” calls vary widely.
“One time I was in the North Carolina mountains with my wife for our anniversary and a 9-year-old boy called and asked: ‘Santa, is God real?’” Braxton said. “I said: ‘Yes he is, and he loves you.’”
Teenagers have asked: “Santa, can you bring me some weed?” A group of seemingly drunk men from New Jersey called one Saturday afternoon asking if Santa was really Black.
“I told them: ‘Don’t you have anything more exciting to do on a Saturday in New Jersey than call me?’” Braxton said. Still, he talked and joked with the group for a while. They called back a week later in a friendlier tone with their kids on the line to talk to Santa.
Some comments are so vile, Braxton won’t repeat them. He discusses the good, the bad, and the ugly in the 2023 short documentary American Santa. Actor Billy Porter was an executive producer of the film, created by the L.A. Times. Braxton thinks the film contributed to a reduction in negative comments, as well as the growing demand for his Santas.
Now, to keep his business strong, he is on a recruitment mission, constantly on the search for Black men with white beards.
“We may need you in a few more years when that beard starts to turn white,” he told Barry Davis that first Saturday in December, as Davis and his wife entered the photo shoot at Haven Farm with 10-month-old Brianna and 2-year-old Barrington.
After a November event at Lake Norman Charter Elementary School in November, Braxton said, he stopped by the Apple Store at Birkdale Village in Huntersville, where he spotted a Black customer sporting a white beard. They talked for 20 minutes and plan to reconnect in January when the prospective St. Nicholas has more time to consider a side gig and Braxton gets to know him better.
But it’s more than just the look—it’s the feel of the season, and sometimes that can come with a hefty price tag.
Most of the Santas Just Like Me buy their own suits at a cost of around $500, said Braxton. It’s important to have quality fabric and detailed piping around the cuffs, buttons, and hem to make that moment with Santa as special as possible. He’s met some men in the national Santas of Color Coalition who spend as much as $4,000 on a custom suit with real brass buttons and fur.
Santa also must unlock the spirit of the holiday, Keyes said.
“It’s the kids who are truly a gift,” Keyes said. “They are entranced, mesmerized, and follow every word Santa says. They have that look that this is one magical moment.”
Katherine Snow Smith teaches journalism and communications as an adjunct instructor at UNC-Chapel Hill and Campbell University. She is a former reporter and editor at The Tampa Bay Times and is the author of Stepping on the Blender and Other Times Life Gets Messy and Rules for the Southern Rulebreaker.