Thought I would also mention that one year, before the EAV Santa came about, we used the Grant Park Santa. I believe it was at the Methodist Church over there. It was great, too, but involved more of a wait. Still better than Mall Santa, though.

Now i probably need to start thinking about when my oldest is going to start figuring out the faux beard. . .

But it’s just the perfect thing for East Atlanta and I’m proud to say really reflects what our neighborhood is all about. I brought up the idea because we had our first kid last year, and the idea of trotting out to a mall for the obligatory Santa photo just made my skin crawl. And with a lot of other folks around here having kids in the past couple of years, there was a lot of similar thinking.

The great thing, though, is how well-geared East Atlanta was to pull this off. Having Dawn & Al at Joe’s as host is perfect, but the really amazing this is the event is totally run by volunteers from the neighborhood. From promotion to scheduling to staffing the event, these folks are all neighbors giving their time and energy because they love East Atlanta and see the value of community. Most of our volunteers – including Santa and our elves – don’t have kids, which tells you a whole lot about community means to us.

So we end up with a Santa event at our local coffee shop where we see a bunch of our friends and do the Santa photos thing as a community. No, our Santa doesn’t have a real beard – but there could be no better Santa experience than the way we do it. I’d love to see more communities retake Santa from the malls and think about what is really important about this tradition.