Santa Claus pays a visit to Fargo Air Museum

Coloring contest, Christmas movies, and photos with Santa are some of the highlights

FARGO, N.D. — Santa Claus made a visit to the Fargo Air Museum to spread holiday cheer to those in the community.

The Fargo Air Museum is known for a pretty special tradition: Santa arriving from the skies to meet kids and take photos.

This year, the museum wasn’t able to hold up that tradition due to COVID restrictions, but they made sure Santa could still pay a visit.

“Next year we hope that we can get him back in a helicopter of some sort or maybe an aircraft to taxi in,” said Fargo Air Museum Executive Director Ryan Thayer.

“Have you been good?” asks Santa to a child getting their photo taken.

Thayer says inviting Santa to the aviation-based attraction just makes sense.

“As we all know, he flies in on reindeer and sleigh, so the principle of flight with Santa Claus really fits in well,” he explained.

To accommodate social distancing, Santa is perched in Duggy, a DC-3 plane that served in WWII.

The most important thing, Thayer says, is that the museum is able to support the community by having a space where kids are able to still see Santa, even if they have to make changes to tradition.

“Really just to be able to make sure that we are still able to promote kids’ activities with Santa Claus, with our expanded youth camps…” said Thayer.

The partnership of Santa and the museum is to get kids exposed to, and hopefully interested in, aviation.

“Merry Christmas!”

The next major event at the Museum will be its annual Spring Fundraiser on March 22nd.