The Shadow
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Willa Hage is leading more national trends than she may realize. The stylish 5-year-old from West Des Moines in faux fur and a ruffled dress chatted with Santa during his recent visit to Valley Junction.
“You can just give me whatever,” she told him.
Willa seemed happy just to chat with Santa. But other youngsters across the country are making a similar request to Santa – only for bleaker reasons.
Santa (and the helpers who dress just like him) report that children have scaled back their wish lists because of high unemployment, housing foreclosures and Scrooge-like economic forecasts. Kids are asking for less – and being promised less as well.
“Little children are a lot smarter than we give them credit for,” said Bill Twohey, 86, who dons a Santa suit every year in Maxwell. “They hear their parents talk and, you know, times are tough.”
A recent survey by the National Endowment for Financial Education reported that many Americans are worried about making ends meet, especially this month. Almost half the respondents reported being more concerned about holiday expenses than they were five years ago. And of those, 54 percent plan to spend less this year than they did back then.
Some Santas have even been taught how to gently scale back their tiny petitioners’ requests.
“We’re just telling them to emphasize giving instead of receiving this year and to make their lists small,” said Holly Valent, a dean at Michigan’s Charles H. Howard Santa Claus School. “In the old days, when we first started, it was 35 or 40 things, but we’ve seen that children have cut back. Even if the families have the means, we’re trying to direct them in a different sense. There are so many other more needy people.”
Twohey, too, has seen kids’ wish lists shrink with the economy.
“Five years ago, they would ask for five, six, seven items, but it has dropped drastically,” he said. “I’d say the last two years they’ve only asked for one thing, sometimes two.”
That was true recently at the West Des Moines Community Center, where most kids concentrated their hopes into a single request. PlayStation 3 video systems were big, and so was Barbie.
In the case of Braylon Jenkins, 5, the holiday would be perfect if only Santa could deliver an Australian tree frog.
But fewer requests haven’t made Santa’s job any easier. His current tour of malls, parades and retirement centers is as hectic as ever.
“I’ve gotten more calls than any other year,” said Valent at the Santa Claus School, which recently graduated its 75th class.
The school’s success may be another sign of the times, as many of this year’s 115 students – the most ever – enrolled with hopes of finding a way to pad their retirement incomes or generate extra holiday cash. (Two years ago the nonprofit Kringle Group, a national network, estimated that mall Santas pull in an average $8,000 each holiday season.)
In these tough times, some Santas tell kids about slowed production at the North Pole. Others explain that in order to make everybody happy at Christmas, nobody gets quite everything he or she requests.
Of course, even some of the shortest lists this year are difficult to fulfill. Can my mom have a job? Can we have money for the heating bill? Or how about some more food? Santas are hearing it all.
“Yyou never promise them anything,” said Santa School graduate Mike Sypherd, 45, of Ainsworth.
