Mall Santa confessions: “The weirdest things kids have asked for”

We imagine being a mall Santa could feel a bit like Groundhog Day.

The same photo is taken of you, wearing the same suit, 10,000 times a day. Plus, you ask the same bloody question to every single child who sits on your lap:

“What would like for Christmas?”

It must be a welcome break then when a little person cracks you up with their answer. An answer you totally were not expecting.

A recent Reddit thread asked mall Santas: “What’s the weirdest thing a kid asked for Christmas?” Check out the responses below.

Left field

“Kids were asking for the usual things, like toys and unicorns. One little girl goes up. You can tell she is thinking really hard. She asks for two rolls of tape. Dream big kid!”

Bwahahaha!

The entrepreneurs

Then there are the kids who will no doubt grow up to be squillionaires.

“One year a kid asked for a coffee maker because he wanted to start his own Starbucks coffee stand instead of a lemonade stand,” laughed one.

“Apparently business was not very good as a lemonade stand but he noticed a lot of adults drink coffee, so he’d make coffee.”

Another child thought bringing the North Pole closer to home would be a way to streamline Christmas and build business:

“Reindeer eggs so he could start his own franchise,” Santa shared.

The hangries

After lining up for way too long (in a child’s mind, anyway) many of the kids just wanted something to eat.

“My daughter asked Santa for a hot dog,” chuckled one mum.

“A piece of toast,” said another Santa.

The kids who belong on the naughty list

Then there were the kids who asked the man in the red suit for things that are just wrong:

“A kid asked for a whistle that she could blow at night to wake her mom up and scare her when she was sleeping.”

But Santa had the right reply:

“No, that would put you on the naughty list, let your mom sleep you little gremlin.”

Then there is the slightly sadistic:

“My sister asked Santa if she could have a horse’s head and an ice cream cone. She explained that she was gonna paint the ice cream cone the colour of the horse, stick it on, mount the horses head to the wall and tell her friends she killed a unicorn. She doesn’t remember.”

And the downright criminal.

“I once asked for ‘an elf to keep as a slave,'” revealed one user.

Hit you in the feels

Then, every so often, poor Santa was brought to tears as little ones revealed their deepest wishes:

“Worked as an elf for a couple of years and we had this ‘wish jar’ that you could put slips of paper in,” one user shared.

“A little girl wrote something down on a piece of paper and folded it and quietly slipped it into the jar. The mom came rushing back after they left asking if we could get the paper out of the jar for her. She unfolded it and in crayon, it said, ‘I want Dad to come home’. The mother started crying and took it with her.”

Sniff.

“Not a Santa but when I was four I asked Santa to get rid of my dad’s cancer. Santa cried, mom cried, I was confused. Dad died on Christmas that year,” another person commented.

Then one Santa shared this tear-jerker:

“One little girl, with her mother looking on at a distance, whispered. ‘Please bring a boyfriend for Mommy. Ever since Daddy died she’s been so lonely. That’s what I really want for Christmas, Santa.’

“I looked up at her loving mother, and back at the girl, and felt a lump in my throat.”

We do too, Santa.

All the animals

Then some kid, who Reddit users thought may have meant ‘aquatic’ or ‘artistic’, asked Santa for this gift in a letter which his elf read:

“I read a letter (maybe I shouldn’t have) from a child who asked for a dolphin, specifically not autistic. Not sure if he had had a bad experience with disabled dolphins or what but he was about six years old.

Yeah, we’re not sure about that one either. Maybe he meant a real dolphin, not a picture?

Another mum shared that her three-year-old son asked Santa for a baby rhino.

When Santa told him the rhino mama would be very sad to lose her baby, he replied:

“Okay, well I’ll take the mama too, maybe she can sleep in my mom’s bed”

Totally. Heaps of room!

Ah, to be a mall Santa!