Photography by Amanda Woytus
A sad Santa
Earlier this month, a snapshot posted to Facebook from an area couple went viral. The subject: the Chesterfield Mall Santa Claus, who looked lonely with no happy children in line to sit on his lap. In fact, there weren't even cranky children in line. Or sad children. Or any children. There were no children at all. Chesterfield Mall, where shops have been closing due to competition from the nearby outlets and which was purchased by a developer, doesn't get much foot traffic (though its nearly abandoned premises is a haven for mall walkers sick of darting around crowds). "The carousel doesn't run, the shops are almost all gone, and in the middle sits lonely Santa waiting for children to visit," Alissa Moore captioned the haunting image.
The good news is that the Internet rallied. Someone started the hashtag #GoSeeChesterfieldSanta. The weekend of December 8, there was a three-hour wait to see the jolly old elf. The bad news is that on December 15, we went to do a check on this Santa, and despite there being a decent line of happy kids at his display in Chesterfield Mall, he still looked a little glum.
Look, maybe Santa Claus is fine. Maybe we were reading into the situation because 2018 has left us feeling blue, too. But doesn't the curve of his shoulders, the way his hands are folded in his lap, communicate something that looks like, well, defeat? Or maybe this Santa is just taking a break from being mobbed by kiddos, little balls of energy who, in 2018, have to be tricked into behaving by a plastic elf that sits on a shelf and not by discipline. Whatever the case, we're here to say that it's OK to feel sad, Chesterfield Mall Santa, if you indeed are. It's the end of 2018, and we're all a little down. So many bad, bad things happened this year, events so serious and depressing, it would be in poor taste to include them here. But this was also the year we lost some of the magic that made our childhoods so great—including heroes we looked up to as kids—and it's worth remembering them.
We lost Stan Lee, the comic book king whose imaginary worlds we loved poring over as young readers. And the creator of Spongebob Squarepants, Stephen Hillenburg, whose under-the-water fantasy land was the best part of our weekend mornings. Don't forget Koko the Gorilla, who we met on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and who taught us American Sign Language for "I love you."
Remember when we were kids and there was polar ice? That was cool (ha). A scary new study that came out this year looks pretty bleak, in regards to climate change and how it's going to affect us in the very near future. The North Pole is Santa's home. That must be a really big bummer for him.
We'd be remiss if we didn't point out that this was also the year children started getting famous on the Internet—the same Internet that rallied around Santa—for recording videos of themselves eating Tide pods.
Toys R Us didn't even make it out of 2018. Santa loves toys. And see that patch of exposed concrete near Santa's display? That's the old Chesterfield Mall carousel we used to ride as kids, torn up, probably tossed into the garbage like everything else good and pure in the world.
So get your sad on, Chesterfield Mall Santa. We get it. But take a break every now and then and look out into the abandoned abyss. You might just see a millennial signing "I love you." (Thank you, Koko.)
