Mall Santas make children cry. Not all children, of course, and (probably) not on purpose, but it happens often enough for baby-weeping-in-Santa's-arms to have cemented itself as a relatable photographic trope. This is neither the children's fault nor the Santas'. Of course you would be frightened, if you were very small and your parent forced you into your pinchy holiday loafers, only to cart you over to the loudly thrumming heart of your local mall and deposit you in the lap of a stranger whose face you can't even see, due to a wild overgrowth of wig. Of course you would be confused, if this same parent spent so much time warning you against talking to inherently dangerous adult, and then forked you over to some cackling, pajama-suited man. Apologies to Mall Santas, who are just doing their jobs and trying to spread holiday cheer, but you can see where this situation might set a child on edge.
Unfortunately, all that nervous energy sometimes results in tantrums, and just very high-strung lines winding through the malls from November to December. This can be disruptive to shoppers not bound for the faux North Pole, but the children still yearn to communicate their capitalist demands to some higher holiday power, and you will still require embarrassing photos to show these children's friends and prospective future partners 10 to 20 years from now, so what is the solution? What is the Better Way?
May I submit: The "whispering grove," as seen at the long-awaited SoNo Collection mall in South Norwalk, Connecticut.
SoNo Collection has been under construction for the past two years, and opened on October 11th, a 725,000-square-foot retail center that pales in comparison to some local malls we know, but in my opinion, vastly improves upon at least one aspect of the consumerist Christmas experience. Instead of making people wait on line to sit in Santa's lap, they will unleash the children into a miniature forest with instructions to just pick a pine and murmur softly into its receptive knots. Or at least, that's how I understand the situation from reading this Hartford Courant article:
Come November, the SoNo Collection will forgo the traditional mall Santa for “first-to-portfolio” holiday experience. “Santa will walk through the shopping center and engage with guests," said [SoNo Senior General Manager Matt] Seebeck. The mall will also have a “whispering grove,” where children can whisper their holiday wishes to Christmas trees and have them travel to the North Pole.
If you do not immediately understand why this is better than regular Santa stuff, please, allow me: Not only does the WHISPERING mandate promise to bring down the decibel level in and around this tiny arboretum, it is also objectively amusing. Your sugar-charged spawn badgering you for one of those extra-long Furby snakes or whatever? Sure sure, why don't you go tell it to that tree over there, kid! This is the holiday equivalent of my dad telling me and my sister — who typically spent our longer car trips physically attacking one another — that we would only see Minnesota's storied armadillo population if we were absolutely silent, because armadillos are fine with and accustomed to highway cacophony but cannot stand the sound of children bickering? To the child's mind, it all scans, and such is the beauty of this plan.
Plus you, the parent, will walk away with a bunch of photos of your kid mumbling furtively to a spruce, an image you will surely treasure forever.
And! On top of all of this, maybe a "whispering grove" is a little more secular than the typical holiday mall decorative scheme, and therefore less alienating to those who don't celebrate Christmas. Or maybe not, because there's still a Santa wandering around in the midst of all of this — chortling with genuine cheer because no one has peed on Santa's pants today, friend! So provided I am interpreting all of this correctly, it really seems like everybody wins when we embrace the Yuletide Entmoot. The best mall Santa is a stand of allegedly sentient trees, change my mind.
