Joel Lagrone brings rock and roll to the city’s most coveted North Pole.
Joel Lagrone, an aerospace engineer and longtime singer, performs as Santa at the NorthPark Center in Dallas on Dec. 3, 2024., better known around these parts as Santa. They ask for Legos and Barbies. They tell him about Bluey and Peppa Pig. Every once in a while, though, Santa gets a curveball.Advertisement
Emery Moore, 3, of Dallas hides behind her mother, Casey Moore, as she meets Santa Claus in his cottage at NorthPark Center, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023, in Dallas.There are times when the best Santa can do is assure a child they’ve been heard, that someone cares. The more common challenge is the kids’ anxiety that comes from encountering a bear of a red-suited stranger. Tears, screams, fits.“Sometimes I have to leave the house,” Lagrone says of his NorthPark cottage.
“Do you know what makes our insurance so high?” says Suzi Migdol, a booking agent at B3 Entertainment, which hires out dozens of Santas across the Dallas-Fort Worth area each holiday season. “It’s Santa!” Dean was one of the Santas Lagrone helped last year. “It was like going to Neil Armstrong to find out how to act like an astronaut,” he says. Even the parts that look simple can throw a newcomer. “Ho, ho, ho is not easy!” he says. “People don’t actually laugh that way, and you can’t do it all the time, or kids will say it’s affected.”
For a send-off, Lagrone sang Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” technically not a Christmas song but one of the purest shots of musical joy in the pop music canon. In future weeks, he’ll fold Chuck Berry and Eric Clapton songs into the mix. At home, away from the crowds, Lagrone has been known to rock out.For the rest of the day, generally from 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. , he will welcome kids into his little Alpine cottage.
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