A professional Santa Claus is using American Sign Language to communicate and bring joy to deaf children this Christmas season.
Charles Graves, 52, has been traveling across the nation for the past several weeks as a fully authorized member of a professional Santa Claus team, according to Today. He is also one of the rare Santas in the U.S. to use sign language, as he is also deaf himself.
Graves says he was inspired to don the iconic Santa costume after having awkward interactions with non-deaf Santas as a child himself.
“As a child, I was very excited to receive a gift, but then you just kind of go away and you’re like, there’s no connection there,” he told the Associated Press (AP).
“Children look at me now and they’re like, wow, you know, there’s a connection there with the deaf culture. And I can always connect with the hearing kids as well,” he added.
Graves noted that although it was expensive and there were many challenges to becoming a professional Santa, it was well worth it since it was “something really, really important” to him, he says via the AP.
Graves performed at over a dozen gigs in November, including in Santa Paula, California, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas. He also does Zoom gigs from time to time.
When Graves made a stop in the Washington D.C. area this month, he made the day of a deaf boy named Kevon Woodward and his mother, April Woodward, who is also deaf.
“Growing up, we never had a deaf Santa Claus, and now we do,” April Woodward told ABC’s Good Morning America. “And that’s very wonderful, especially for my son to be able to communicate and have that vision of the memory of seeing Santa Claus, and having that positive communication is very inspiring.”
Seeing deaf children brighten up when they meet a Santa who can communicate with them also brings much-needed joy to Graves himself.
“When they come here… and that child sees a deaf Santa Claus, there’s so much happiness,” he told NBC News.
In addition to performing as a professional deaf Santa, Graves works a day job at a school for deaf children in New Braunfels, Texas, where he lives.
You can follow Ethan Letkeman on Twitter at @EthanLetkeman.
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