SALT LAKE CITY — Randall Carlisle witnessed something remarkable last week at Odyssey House of Utah. The kids staying there with parents who are in treatment were getting ready for school — and all 23 of them were decked out in a new coat, hat, gloves and boots, each lovingly picked to match the child’s favorite color.
“Everyone loves Secret Santas for two reasons: We all share the fantasy wish and hope that we will be the recipient of Secret Santa’s generosity. And we all experience the vicarious joy and pleasure of giving through Secret Santa’s acts of kindness. We feel happy — once removed.” — Fran Walfish, a family and relationship therapist in Beverly Hills, California, who wrote “The Self-Aware Parent”
They’d been gifted the items by employees at a Cottonwood Heights company that voted to do away with its Christmas party in favor of doing something kind in the community.
“We get different magical people showing up at Christmas. The company had called way ahead and gotten sizes and what colors the kids liked,” said Carlisle, media specialist. “They also brought each child a wrapped gift, to be sure they’d have one on Christmas Day. These kids were so excited. Moms were crying. It was really fun to watch.”
“Secret Santas” are popping up all over the country right now, carrying on the legacy of a Kansas City man who is credited with starting the tradition. And they’re delighting not just recipients of their largesse, but the larger community as they pay off layaways, hand out cash and settle medical debts, among other things, for families struggling in what’s supposed to be a joyful season.
“Everyone loves Secret Santas for two reasons: We all share the fantasy wish and hope that we will be the recipient of Secret Santa’s generosity. And we all experience the vicarious joy and pleasure of giving through Secret Santa’s acts of kindness. We feel happy — once removed,” said Fran Walfish, a family and relationship therapist in Beverly Hills, California, who wrote “The Self-Aware Parent.”
One of the most active Secret Santas is spreading cheer — and amazement — in southeastern Idaho, where the jolly old elf has teamed up with East Idaho News to spend a half-million dollars on everything from gift cards to funeral expenses.
Even billionaire Bill Gates has gotten in on the Secret Santa action, through an anonymous gift exchange on the website Reddit.
Here’s a sampling of what’s been done to help others across the country. Maybe their actions will inspire you and your family to undertake a top-secret operation of your own.
Kindness in Kansas City
Larry Stewart, of Kansas City, wasn’t the first person to sneak around distributing gifts at Christmas — that would be St. Nicholas, according to tradition. But in America, Stewart is often credited with being the first person to hand out $100 bills to strangers en masse, especially at Christmastime. Stewart did that for more than 25 years, giving away more than $1 million before his death in 2007.
Stewart became a Secret Santa because someone had once shown him a desperately needed kindness, he told radio host Dave Ramsey.
Once, when he was homeless and broke, Stewart ate at a diner in Mississippi and then said he had lost his wallet when it was time to pay the bill. A cook overheard the conversation, and came up and gave him a $20 bill, saying “Son, you must have dropped this.” After that, Stewart promised God that if he was ever in a position to help others, he would do so. He started by handing out $5 or $10, and as he became more successful, he began distributing hundreds. He didn’t want publicity, and only let his identity be known after a newspaper found out and planned to publish a story as he was dying of esophageal cancer.
According to the Kansas City Star, he recruited others to carry on the tradition after he died, and people have done so, not only in Kansas City, but all across the nation. And Secret Santas are not just handing out cash like Stewart did, but arranging other kinds of life-changing gifts.
In southeastern Idaho, a news crew showed up to tell Dale Gneiting, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a work accident 25 years ago, that Santa is paying for a fence so his new dog can have more freedom. Santa also provided a new bed for Gneiting, which made the Idaho Falls man cry. Other recent gifts included fixing the van that Margo Plum, an aide at Bonneville High School in Idaho Falls, uses to transport her son, 19, who has disabilities. The gift, delivered by one of the reporters, included $5,000 and the cost of snow tires and other repairs.
The same Secret Santa gives new gifts each day and provided Steve and Camille Moon of Rigby, Idaho, and their family with $3,000 in gift cards for groceries and another $3,000 in gas gift cards. Moon travels to Utah for medical treatment. Santa also covered funeral costs for a woman whose husband of 45 years died last summer and gave her a $1,000 grocery gift card, which will help as she’s raising her 16-year-old grandson.
CBS News reported that a wealthy businessman who has made it an annual habit to hand out $100, $200 or $300 in Christmas cheer to people in need this year recruited Milwaukee County Transit System bus drivers to hand out the gifts to riders in need, reducing both drivers and riders to tears. Santa said he asked five transit drivers to help him because the transit system has a real culture of caring. You can watch one of the transit “elves” in action in this CBS video.
Good will toward men
In Fort Collins, Colorado, a Secret Santa has been buying out the toy section of a local goodwill for years at Christmas time so that every child who comes into the store can get a free toy.
According to The Coloradoan, “The Secret Santa, a Fort Collins resident, has been buying out Goodwill’s toy section each Christmas for somewhere between seven and nine years — the tradition is so long-standing that nobody can remember quite when it started. He said he walked into Goodwill all those years ago after he had an epiphany about ‘the grace of giving.’”
Friends of the anonymous donor and others in the community have contributed toys this year, bringing the total giveaway to about 10,000 items.
WRBL in eastern Alabama is reporting that the Secret Santa who pays off Walmart layaways has once again paid off $20,000 worth, selecting accounts that have children’s toys. Santa also added $8,600 in gift cards for needy families. The jolly old elf struck this year at the Auburn Walmart; last year he made those with layaways happy at the Opileka store. (Layaway plans allow shoppers to select items and make a small down payment, then pay off the purchase over time, helping shoppers without a lot of resources to buy items.)
In Florida, Fox 35 Orlando reported that the Dade City Police Department paid off 26 Walmart layaway accounts totaling $4,300. Chicago Bears linebacker Khalil Mack also delivered some Christmas cheer to Walmart shoppers in Fort Pierce, Florida, by paying off 300 holiday layaway accounts worth $80,000, according to the Chicago Tribune.
A couple playing Secret Santa in Detroit were handing out $100 bills recently at local bus stops, schools, city parks and even Dollar Tree stores, according to the Detroit Free Press. In early December, they handed out $13,000 that way. Over the years, the article notes, they’ve donated more than $171,000 to strangers, from elderly people to a single mom shopping for inexpensive toys for her daughter. They told the newspaper they get a lot out of the gifting — including lots and lots of hugs.
CBS’ WIAT TV caught the joy and the hugs after a Secret Santa in Perry County, Alabama, recruited members of the sheriff’s office, working with the Alabama Coalition for Healthy Mothers and Children, to hand out a total of $15,000 to families and individuals identified as particularly needy.
A check for 10 grand
You don’t have to have hundreds or thousands of dollars to be a secret Santa. You can do it with $10 or $20, as the original Secret Santa, Stewart, demonstrated when he was just getting started.
In years past, some have played Santa by buying strangers things from their Amazon wish list. Amazon no longer allows people to see the lists of people they don’t know, but anyone can still shop for a charity that has posted a list (visit smile.amazon.com/charitylists and type in the cause you wish to support).
Others are joining orchestrated Secret Santa gift exchanges, such as one run by the website Reddit, which had 113,000 sign-ups this year by people from around the world. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is the most famous participant; last year, he surprised a Virginia woman with a lavish gift package that included a $500 donation to an animal sanctuary and a $500 gift card to an arts and crafts store.
The Deseret News had its own Secret Santa moment some years ago when the late billionaire philanthropist Jon M. Huntsman wrote a check for $10,000 to cover the cost of providing Christmas to more than 300 kids who still needed to be adopted through Sub for Santa. It had been a tough economic year and the number of needy families in the program was particularly high. The donation, previously anonymous, guaranteed that hundreds of kids had something under the tree that Christmas Day.
As for the company surprising temporary residents at Odyssey House, it was eventually “outed” for its goodness because Carlisle wanted to use pictures on the treatment program’s Facebook page. The winter supplies came from Imagine Health. But they’d all intended to do their giving without fanfare, simply because the need was there and they could meet it.
Isn’t that the secret to being a real Santa, anyway?