Keith at Santa's Workshop -- 02-20Dec2015

This was my eighth year playing for the families waiting in line to see Santa and Mrs. Claus at the city of Mission Viejo's elaborate Santa's Workshop. There are nine nights, and I play eight of them, only 'cuz one overlaps with their own Holly Jolly Lights Tour party that I also play.

I'm set up such that the kids can come over since they're "contained" by the picket fence behind me and the queue itself -- the parents (or one parent) can stay in line and call the kids back to the line when they get close to Santa. The idea is to give the hyped-up kids some distraction when the line to see Santa can get up to two hours long. And it works out really well, except...

Sometimes the coordinator allows some local group to come play. The first Wednesday was a tiny tots dance school -- very cute, but you could only hear the boom box, not the kids, and only then if you weren't in line, since they'd set up on the grass to "play to" the moms, grammas, etc. and not the general public. Not sure why they needed to do it here, except I guess it was a nice setting for Dad's pictures.

The second Wednesday was a middle school caroling group -- not bad, but inaudible, even though I tried to get them to set up nearer the line. It's not so much that the line *needs* them, but when nobody can hear you so they ignore you, it's demoralizing for the singers. Lose-lose. And same with the third group, a small group of girls who sang inaudibly a capella for a while, and then lip synched (or sang along, I guess) with a kids choir record on a boom box.

Anyway, when it was my turn, I had fun, like always. I love playing for kids. And most of them are all dressed up for the Santa pictures, so it's very cute. I brought my "jingle sticks", and this year realized that, to keep the wall of noise created by them more manageable, just put fewer out there. Duh. Not to mention that it's easier to keep track of them so they don't walk away as often. I do still have to take them away from kids (always boys) who have decided to see how hard you have to bang the stick against the table to break it, or start to use them as a weapon. Still, overall, the kids that enjoy playing with them outweigh the hassle.

Of course, filling two or three hours with the 7 or 8 kids' Christmas songs gets a bit repetitive, so I branch out a little by playing "Do You Want To Build a Snowman" from "Frozen". It's got "snowman" in it, don't it? Of course, once I've done that one, they all suss out that I probably know "Let It Go", so then we do that one. And I sometimes throw in "Over the Rainbow".

And then usually, when the line gets short at the end of the evening, I can start up some of the crooning old-school ones -- they're so much fun to sing. Reckon I'll be back next year...