YAKUTAT, Alaska — Forget the open-air sleigh, showered with gifts and powered by flying reindeer.
Santa and Mrs. Claus took super-sized rides to southeastern Alaska this week in a C-17 military cargo plane and a camouflaged Humvee, delivering toys to the Tlingit village of Yakutat, northwest of Juneau.
The visit was part of this year’s Operation Santa Claus, an Alaska National Guard outreach program to largely indigenous communities in the nation’s largest state. Each year, the Guard picks a village that has suffered recent hardships – in the case of Yakutat, a massive snowfall that threatened to collapse buildings in 2022.
“This is one of the funniest things we get to do, and this is a proud moment for the National Guard,” Maj. Gen. Torrence Saxe, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard, said Wednesday.
Saxe wore a Guard uniform and Santa hat that expanded his unit’s dress code.
The Humvee caused a commotion as it pulled into the school parking lot, prompting a murmur of, “It’s Santa Claus!” It’s Santa Claus!” pierced the cold air as dozens of elementary school children gathered outside.
At school, Mrs. Claus read a Christmas story about the reindeer Dasher. The couple in red then had their pictures taken with almost all of the approximately 75 students and handed out new backpacks full of gifts, books, snacks and school supplies donated by the Salvation Army. The school provided lunch, and a local restaurant provided the ice cream and toppings for a sundae bar.
Student Thomas Henry, 10, said that although the contents of the backpack were “pretty good”, his favorite item was a plastic dinosaur.
Another, 9-year-old Mackenzie Ross, held her new plush seal toy as she walked through the school gym.
“I think it’s special that I have this opportunity to be here today because I’ve never experienced this before,” she said.
Yakutat, a Tlingit village of about 600 residents, is located in the lowlands of the Gulf of Alaska, at the top of the Alaskan panhandle. Nearby is the Hubbard Glacier, a frequent stop for cruise ships.
Some National Guard members who visited Yakutat on Wednesday were also there in January 2022, when storms dropped about 6 feet (1.8 meters) of snow in just a few days, damaging buildings.
Operation Santa began in 1956 when floods severely curtailed the hunt for residents of St. Mary’s, western Alaska. Having to spend their money on food left them with little for Christmas presents, so the military intervened.
This year, visits were planned to two other communities affected by flooding. Santa’s visit to Circle, in northeast Alaska, went off without a hitch. Bad weather prevented a visit to Crooked Creek, in the southwestern part of the state, but Christmas was saved when the gifts were delivered there on November 16.
“We tend to go into rural communities where it’s very isolated,” said Jenni Ragland, service extension director for the Salvation Army Alaska Division. “A lot of children haven’t traveled to the big cities where we normally have Santa Claus and big stores with Christmas gifts and Christmas trees, so we’re kind of taking the Christmas program on the road.”
After the C-17 Globemaster III landed in Yakutat, it quickly returned to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, an hour away, because there was nowhere to park at the village’s small airfield. It later returned to pick up the Christmas crew.
Santa and Mrs. Claus, along with their huddled elves, were seen falling asleep on the return flight.