Welcome to our new web site!

To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely avaiable, through October 1, 2018.

During this time, print and digital subscribers will not need to log in to view our stories or e-editions.

Santa plans Christmas Eve shave for charity

Fundraising effort benefits Jardin de los Niños

Posted

A reporter well into his 50s recently interviewed Santa Claus, seated in his capacious chair, during a lull before an expected evening rush of children coming to see him at the Mesilla Valley Mall. 

“Take a seat,” Santa said after agreeing to an interview. And he patted his chair. While the reporter did not actually sit on Santa’s lap, he did sit on a corner of the red chair, addressing Santa much as the children of Las Cruces meet him. 

However, in this conversation, Santa confided a wish of his own. 

Greg Scarboro of Lexington, Ky., has inhabited the role of Santa at the mall for six years, with the exception of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And for the fourth year in a row, Santa Greg will celebrate Christmas Eve by having his beard – a genuine beard, albeit bleached white, that he has groomed since last February – shaved completely off, mustache and all, by barber Joel Palomarez.

Scarbaro is calling on the mall’s visitors and community members to drop a donation in the box prominently on display at The Barbershop, Palomarez’s shop at the mall, located steps away from Santa’s North Pole setup. 

The two men hatched the fundraising effort in 2021, with a different local organization selected each year. It began when Scarboro, whose father was a barber, talked to Palomarez about his straight-razor shaves, which he described as “a vanishing art” during his conversation with the Las Cruces Bulletin.

Palomarez said the idea unfolded when he and Scarboro got acquainted at the mall, and the barber revealed that he did some Santa work himself, delivering toys door-to-door across the border in Mexico, which he still does today. 

“Let’s do something here!” he recalled Scarboro saying, with the idea of a public clean shave event unfolding soon after. 

This year, they agreed to raise funds benefiting Jardin de los Niños, a Las Cruces nonprofit facilitating child care and educational services for young children, including behavioral health interventions and family programs. 

Supporting the event is simple enough: A large box for cash donations, or checks payable to Jardin de los Niños, is set up at The Barbershop’s reception desk, and the Palomarez said Santa’s shave is scheduled at 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 24: Christmas Eve. 

Meanwhile, Santa continues to meet the public, hear children’s wishes and pose for photographs at the mall, 700 S. Telshor Boulevard, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day, with a break to “feed the reindeer” from 3-4 p.m.

Santa Claus, Mesilla Valley Mall, Jardin de los Niños, Las Cruces

X