(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

 

Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 11, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 14, 2025

For Space Needle’s longtime Santa, Christmas is all about presence

By Jean Sherrard

Some things must be seen to be believed. The transformation of mild-mannered Russell Long into Santa Claus is one.

Emerging from a basement changing room beneath the Space Needle, snowy-bearded Santa Russ encounters wreaths of smiles and spontaneous delight.

“Santa, you’re back!” exclaim Needle staffers with childlike glee. In the gift shop, visitors clamor for ussies with Saint Nick as others point and wave.

While we ride the elevator to the observation deck for our photo shoot, I ask what draws people, young and old alike. He twinkles, then takes my breath away.

“Unconditional love,” he says gently but firmly.

Long’s metamorphosis began nearly 30 years ago when, facing early retirement from Microsoft, he felt adrift. A pastor at his church made an offhand suggestion: with his rotund figure, full beard, and kindly demeanor, why not play Santa for the season?

He joined Arthur & Associates, the Seattle company that has supplied Santas for many decades. In 1943, its founder, Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer Art French, watched crowds visiting the Frederick & Nelson Santa through his office window and thought, “We should be taking pictures of that.” The following year, French opened a photo studio in the department store and began snapping shots of tots on Santa’s lap. He made over $10,000 in a single month, several times his annual P-I salary. His idea spread nationwide, becoming a holiday tradition that endures eight decades later.

Long dove in. Dyeing his blonde hair and beard white was, he recalls, torturous. “The bleach was so strong, I had to breathe through a hose for half an hour.” A local tailor hand-sewed his first velveteen red suit.

By 1998, Santa Russ was greeting families at Bellevue Square. Later generations followed him from mall to Needle, bringing children and grandchildren to perch on his lap.

The work isn’t without strain. “My cheeks hurt those first few days,” he says. “You don’t realize how much smiling it takes. And you have to train your mustache to curl up — it makes the smile bigger.”

Each appearance begins with a quiet ritual of transformation. “White gloves first, then gold spectacles, then the robe,” he says. “By the time I’ve finished dressing, Santa has arrived.”

The enduring moments aren’t about presents. “One boy, around nine, told me what he wanted most was for his dad to quit smoking,” Long says. “I turned to the father and said, ‘Did you hear that? He wants you to stick around.’ That’s when you realize Santa can touch a whole family.”

He also recalls parents arriving from Seattle Children’s Hospital, bringing fragile children for what might be final photos. “You never forget those visits,” he says softly.

So what’s Santa’s secret? He sparkles. “We all need to give our gifts,” he says. “Everyone has something: time, kindness, love. It does us good when we give it.”

For Santa Russ, the gift is presence itself. “I know how to listen,” he says. “Being heard and accepted — that’s the true spirit of Christmas.”

WEB EXTRAS

First, a bit of shameless self-promotion. Join me for the 18th annual Rogue’s Christmas, this Sunday at Seattle’s Town Hall!

Now back to our regular programming! To watch a narrated 360 degree video of the Santa Russ column recorded atop the Space Needle, click right here.

Also, check out a few extras from Santa Russ himself beginning with 18 sequential annual photos of Isabel Brownlow.

Afterward, you’ll find a half-dozen Seattle Post-Intelligencer news clips detailing the origin of Santa photos here at Frederick & Nelson by P-I photographer Art French in the mid-1940s.

Plus, there’s video of a Dec. 20, 2017, “Eric’s Heroes” story from KOMO-TV, courtesy archivist Joe Wren, covering the Frederick & Nelson Santa-photo story.

In addition, here’s a column from four years ago about Seattle’s 1968-1976 giant Westlake Santa.

And from my column partner Clay Eals, scroll down further to see several more Santa-related extras!

Santa-related extras from Clay

By Clay Eals

First is a charming take-off on a classic holiday poem, “T’was the Plight Before Christmas,” by West Seattleite Sue Barry. It makes for a delightful, read-aloud piece, perhaps best-timed for Christmas Eve. You might call it a union tale, but the message goes much further. To download it, just click the Santa-hat image here:

Next is a repeat from five years ago from this blog — but actually from 40 years ago when it first was published!

I offer this “Black Santa” story of mine that appeared Christmas Day 1985 on the front page of the West Seattle Herald, for which I served as editor. The fine photos were by Herald photographer Brad Garrison. This is posted with the permission of Robinson Newspapers.

I have tried searching online for Tracy Bennett, the subject of this story, who would be 62 today. Alas, I have turned up nothing.

Still, this story about Tracy and his view on the Santa milieu remains timely, powerful and inspiring — at least, that’s my hope.

At the time I wrote it, the story resonated quite personally, From 1985 to 1993, I volunteered more than 100 times to play Santa for children and adults at parties and in schools, community halls and private homes throughout Puget Sound as part of the American Heart Association’s “Santa with a Heart” fundraising program. As any Santa will tell you, it was a uniquely heartwarming and unforgettable experience. (See clippings at bottom.)

Please click any of the images once or twice to enlarge them for easy reading. And if you want to read the transcribed Black Santa text instead of reading directly from the images, scroll down.

Merry merry, and ho, ho, ho!

West Seattle Herald, Dec. 25, 1985

‘Just for you’

Black Santa relishes children’s happiness

Santa Claus, known as Tracy Bennett in the “off”-season, walks into a class of busy fifth- and sixth-graders at Hughes Elementary School in West Seattle.

“Hi, boys and girls,” says Santa.

“Oh, hi Santa Claus!” the students respond, almost in unison.

“Howya doin’?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good. I thought I’d drop in and visit you for a minute.”

“Yeah,” say a couple of students. “You changed colors.”

“Yeah,” answers Santa, “I sure did, didn’t I?”

By CLAY EALS

When most of those who are opening packages under the Christmas tree this morning think about “the man with all the toys,” their vision probably doesn’t look like Tracy Bennett.

That’s because Bennett is Black, while nearly all of the Santas in the world — at least in the United States — seem to be as white as the North Pole’s year-round snow.

Bennett isn’t bothered, however. He keeps an upbeat, optimistic attitude about the seasonal craft he’s practiced for the past 12 years. He says he’s encountered subtle prejudice from adults and skepticism from kids, but he boasts of being able to win over most of the doubters.

Exposure is what Bennett says he needs most. And so do the other Black Santas in America, he says.

Bennett got some of the exposure he desired last week when he walked the halls of both Hughes and Van Asselt elementary schools, the latter of which is attended by some students who live in southern West Seattle and the city side of White Center.

He roamed the halls at Hughes and, with the assistance of teacher Willa Williams, peeked into classrooms and dropped off sacks of candy canes, occasionally stopping for a few minutes to talk to kids on his lap. Bearing a staccato, smile-inducing “ho, ho, ho,” he almost resembled a politician, repeatedly extending his hand for a shake and greeting children with a steady stream of “Howyadoin’? … Howyadoin’, guy? … Hiya guys. Workin’ hard?”

The racially mixed classes responded in a generally positive way. Although one sixth-grader was heard to say, “I thought Santa Claus was white, because I saw a white Santa Claus at The Bon,” for the most part any negative comments centered on whether he was “real,” not on his skin color.

“He’s nice, but his hair’s made out of cotton. Weird,” said fourth-grader Jessica Canfield. “And he has clothes under his other clothes.”

“He’s fine, and I like him,” said fellow fourth-grader Johnny Cassanova. “He said that he would visit me, and he would try to get everything that I want for Christmas and to get good grades.”

Was he the “real” Santa? “Yeah,” said Johnny, “to me he is.”

“It went real good,” Bennett said afterward. “They were very polite. They weren’t skeptical. Mostly loving, you can tell.”

Bennett, who at 22 is unemployed and intends to go to school so that he can get a job either as a police officer or working with handicapped kids, began his Santa “career” at the young age of 10. “I started as a little dwarf and moved my way up,” the Rainier Valley resident said with a laugh.

Over the years, Bennett said, he’s been Santa at private gatherings and community centers in Seattle’s south end, and he’s pieced together a costume he thinks is unimposing. The key part, he said, is his beard, which is a rather flat affair.

“The big Santa Claus beards and hairs are so flocky, so thick, that it scares some children,” Bennett said. “His color of his suit and his beard is so bright already, along with the brightness of his face.

“A Black Santa Claus with a white beard seems to bring out an older look, and the color of my skin makes it look like a normal Black man wearing a suit.”

Consequently, he said, kids warm up to him rather quickly. “Apparently I work out pretty good,” he said.

Children, both white and minority, raise the racial question fairly often, Bennett said. They usually just say, “Santa Claus is white,” expecting a response, he said.

“But I really don’t say nothing. I just look at ’em and smile, or I say ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ and they usually don’t ask anymore,” he said. “I’m used to it, so it’s no problem.”

Bennett does look forward to a day when more Black Santas are around to break the racial ice at Christmastime.

“I’m not the only one, but I never see ’em in stores,” he said. If just one major downtown store would feature a Black Santa, “that would mean the 12 years that I’ve been working on it has started to come through,” he said. “It would be a breakthrough. I want it to happen.”

He also would like to see children exposed to Santas of a variety of races. “If we bring the children Black Santa Clauses, Korean Santa Clauses, Japanese Santa Clauses, the kids will like it after a while,” he said.

For that to happen, however, some prejudices will have to be broken down gradually. “You can feel it’s there,” he said. “You try to believe it’s not there, but you can see it in people’s eyes.”

Like any Santa Claus, Bennett finds it a “thrill” to portray Saint Nick to children. “When kids are happy, I’m happy. When they’re sad, I feel for ’em. I’d like to give ’em more than I can.”

He insists, however, that it’s important not to insist that he’s the “real” Santa when kids challenge him. He tells children, “You don’t have to believe in me. But I’m doing this just for you.”

“Why ruin a kid’s mind and say, ‘I’m real, believe me’?” he said. “He (Santa) is a beautiful man, OK? No one can take that away from him. But we have to tell what’s real from not. We have to tell our kids we play Santa Claus because we love children.”

Bennett also said it’s important not to push the religious aspects of Christmas as Santa. “When we talk about religion, we have to let kids do what they want, do not force them.”

Williams, the teacher, took the same approach in deciding to invite Bennett, a friend of hers, to visit Hughes. While Christmas “is a fun time and should be a time for joy,” she said she’s well aware of the Seattle School District’s policy that’s intended to separate religion from school activity.

Bringing Santa to the classroom — and a Black Santa at that — was an attempt to get students to “understand each other’s differences,” she said.

“When I told them Santa Claus might visit, one student told me, ‘I don’t believe in Santa Claus.’ Another said, ‘Santa Claus is my mom and dad,’ and another said, ‘Santa Claus is Jesus’,” Williams said. “It was just the idea of general thought and letting them express themselves and learning to accept each and every person and their differences as long as there isn’t any harm.”

For Bennett, the delight of being Santa is that “guy is just a giving person, you know?

“He gives away things to make people happy. If a child’s sick in bed, he sees Santa Claus, he’s going to try to smile as much as he can because he’s happy. When they say, ‘Santa Claus, you didn’t give me so-and-so,’ I say, ‘Well, maybe next year, OK?’

“I don’t tell them I’m going to get this (particular item) for them and get their hopes up. I tell them that maybe somebody will get it for them very soon.

“One guy said he wanted to go to college, and I said, ‘Maybe next Christmas or a few Christmases from now, you’ll be going to college and be saying you got your wish.’ ”

Bennett clearly is hooked on his annual role: “As long as I live and as long as I stay healthy, I’ll always be Santa Claus.”

P.S. Clay as Santa

As promised above, here are tidbits from my eight-year volunteer Santa Claus “career” for the American Heart Association: two clippings in which I demonstrate for other Santas the best way to don the uniform, plus a sketch I created to provide step-by-step guidance. Click once or twice on the images to enlarge them. —Clay

A bonus:

Just for fun and to keep with the theme, I also am including a Santa article I wrote that appeared on Christmas Eve 1980 in The Oregonian near the end of my eight-year stint as a reporter and photographer for that newspaper. Again, click once or twice on the image to enlarge it for easy readability. Enjoy! —Clay