Kevin Watkins and Santa, Ross Sweatman celebrate 25 years of bring Santa to the homes of Hastings.
Kevin Watkins and Santa, Ross Sweatman celebrate 25 years of bring Santa to the homes of Hastings.
Twenty-five years of Christmas magic and joy, 25 years of driving around the streets of Hastings, 25 years of hard work and 25 years of creating childhood memories.
Each December, Kevin Watkins brings Santa (Ross Sweatman) to the people of Hastings. They see Santa in his sleigh being towed right past their homes.
After the annual Hastings Christmas Parade was discontinued in the late 1990s, Watkins recruited his friend Sweatman to help fill the Christmas spirit-sized gap by bringing Santa to every street in Hastings.
Watkins said that when he found out the Christmas parade was stopping, he told Sweatman,” We’re gonna fill this gap in Hastings. It is not going to go without something special at Christmas.”
“I said we’re not going to set up in a shop; we’re going to take Santa around the streets to people’s homes because I’ve seen that work.”
Watkins took it upon himself to ensure Santa and Christmas magic still existed in Hastings, saying, “It was probably infused in my DNA.”
At a young age, Watkins had watched his father, a member of the Home Servicemen’s Association, drive Santa around to the homes of other Association members.
Kevin Watkins, HDC councillor driving Santa around the Hastings city centre. Photo / Warren Buckland
One Saturday before Christmas, the group would put a canopy on the back of an army truck, put Santa on a seat in the back, and visit all the members.
With little to no money after the war, the truck carrying Santa was decorated with discarded aluminium foil from old milk stamp bottle tops as tinsel. There was no music, no lights, and one loudspeaker that would call out to families by name when Santa was at their homes.
Back then, the truck only went to the members of the guard, not the general public like Watkins and Santa do today.
“I was really lucky because I could go in that truck with my Dad, taking Santa to people’s homes and seeing all the kids come out on the streets,” Watkins said.
The first Santa sleigh display was a cardboard structure built by Santa himself, with three candles for decoration. It was on a short trailer, and Santa would be towed by Watkins’ car.
The next year, the duo stepped things up with a Santa sleigh, one reindeer, and organ pipes up the back. A few years later, two more reindeer were added to the fleet.
After adding the two new reindeer, a “kind gentleman” in Hastings offered to help get four more reindeer to create the full set. Today, the iconic sleigh is made from fibreglass, covered in lights and led by Rudolph out front and the six other reindeer behind.
One source of funding for the sleigh trailer was a friend of Sweatman’s who had been working on a local marae, looking after 16-year-old “wayward kids”.
Councillor Kevin Watkins driving Santa (Ross Sweatman) around Hastings streets bringing families out of their houses for 25 years. Photo / Warren Buckland
Sweatman, a policeman at the time, was told by his friend on the marae that every day in December, the teenagers would ask, “Where’s Santa, and can we go look?”
When the local Santa himself heard, he said to the teens, “You guys are 16. What is this?” They told Sweatman that “in Auckland, where we come from, he goes down the main street. We never see him. But here, he goes down every street”.
Sweatman’s friend, who looked after the teenagers, told the local Santa that if none of the boys played up between then and Christmas, he would pay for the updated sleigh.
“Not one of those kids played up between then and Christmas; they were rough, tough kids, who needed one one-on-one supervision when they were down here, so it (Santa and the sleigh) did some good,” Sweatman said.
He added, “So I think that’s the difference between a Christmas parade, where people come to the town centre, Santa goes through, and then it’s all over.”
“That’s one scenario; our scenario is that for, you know, nearly 24 days and nights and the streets and their patch, it goes to their place.”
The pair are well-known faces in December. Riding through residential streets, the Hastings CBD, and retirement villages, people eagerly await their visit, and Watkins and Santa try not to miss anyone. However, streets with overgrown trees and places their sleigh has had issues in the past do get missed.
Twenty-five years is a good innings for Hastings’ Santa sleigh and even Watkins and Sweatman don’t know how they managed to go so long.
For a while the pair have battled with the right time to give up their Christmas tradition; however, they still can’t see this year as their last.
Kevin Watkins, from Hastings, driving around Santa and his sleigh. Photo / Paul Taylor
Watkins said, “We got to 10 years, and we said, oh, this is probably the last year. Then we got to 15 and said, how the hell did we get to 15, then we got to 20 and questioned, Is this the last year?”
Now, at 25 years of being Santa and Santa’s driver, the friends are asking each other yet again, is this the last year?
And to that question, Watkins said, he would have to be a “brave man to say, yes”.
Other than the enjoyment, passion, and love they have for their Christmas role, which keeps them coming back year after year, Santa (Sweatman) said he is also concerned about what would happen to the sleigh and the reindeer if they decided to stop.
“It’s a horrible thought in the back of our mind, if we give it to someone to do the thing, we lose any control over it. And the next thing is, it’s become a money-making enterprise, which is exactly the antithesis (opposite) of what we are.”
For the duo, their Santa display has always been about no commercialism and no advertising, making it hard to attract sponsors. Usually, with a sponsorship, the companies see their names in lights.
Santa said the sleigh has had a few “stumbling blocks” along the way, but it now has “very good sponsors, who mostly want to remain anonymous”.
He added, “They’re quite open about it. They’re not hiding it, but they say we don’t need to be promoted for doing this. We’re doing it because we want to.”
The non-commercialisation comes from a deep love for sharing the Christmas spirit for both Watkins and Sweatman.
Watkins said, “It’s the happiest time of my year going around and seeing all types of people coming out smiling, waving and dancing.”
He added that the first few days had been a fantastic start to the festive season this year, with hundreds of people coming out of their homes to wave or take a photo with Santa and also following the sleigh in their cars.
“We know a little how the Pied Piper feels – we love it, we do it for Hastings, and we’re pretty proud of it.”
Maddisyn Jeffares became the editor of the Hawke’s Bay community papers Hastings Leader and Napier Courier in 2023 after writing at the Hastings Leader for almost a year. She has been a reporter with NZME for almost three years and has a strong focus on what’s going on in communities, good and bad, big and small. Email news tips to her at: maddisyn.jeffares@nzme.co.nz
