SOME people get Christmas jobs in High Street shops or at their local pubs.

But without a doubt, the toughest job around is being one of Santa’s elves.

This year, 21,000 people went to meet Father Christmas in his grotto at Millets Farm Centre near Abingdon.

For the elves who help him, meeting wide-eyed children and beleaguered parents starts as early at 8am, and some nights doesn’t finish until 9pm.

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Elves work five days a week as well as weekends, and the last visit at 8.15pm on Christmas Eve has to be as bright and cheerful as the first.

On an average day, Millets’ 12 elves have to meet, greet and treat 880 visitors in 16 tours of its winter wonderland.

Oxford Mail:

  • Pete Hughes with the Elf Academy, left to right, Alyssa Himpson, Nicola Reynolds, Paris Sandiford and Bella Allen-Stevens

Millets’ Head Elf is 23-year-old Paris Sandiford, aka Jingling Jerry, from Wallingford.

Miss Sandiford, who works in childcare the remainder of the year, was asked back to Millets for a second year.

She said: “As far as CV-building goes, I don’t think I could get better than Head Elf.

“I just love seeing the kids saying ‘that’s the real Father Christmas and I just met him’.

But, she said, it is hard work.

At interview, candidates are asked: “Do you believe in Father Christmas?”

Miss Sandiford said: “In order for the kids to believe, you have to believe.”

After managers whittled this year’s 50 applicants down to 12 who could help bring Christmas to life, they were bussed to Milton Keynes for a day of ‘Elf Academy’.

Oxford Mail:

  • Pete delivering treats to Alexander Oliver, Toby Hollard and LJ Savvides 

There, some 50 elves from Frosts garden centres across the country learnt the songs, the script and the dance moves, as well as some more subtle skills.

Another rule of Elf Academy is that adults who bring children to see Santa are not ‘parents’ – they are grown-ups or ‘big people’.

Shop manager Nigel Rees said the most important quality he looks for in his elves is jollity.

He said: “The crazier you are, the better.”

PETE HUGHES REFLECTS ON HIS DAY AS AN ELF...

ALL right, I’ll admit I did quite like being an elf.

These people take Christmas seriously. Almost all of Millets’ elves are either performance artists or work with children the rest of the year.

When I ask what’s in the reindeer food, Snowball Sammy tells me without a hint of irony it is a magic elf mixture

Children get to make up little bags of feed to leave out for Santa’s reindeer on Christmas Eve, and Sammy tells me: “It’s the boys’ and girls’ kindness that makes the reindeer fly.”

I learnt a dance routine to accompany the elves’ song which uses real sign language and I learnt the collective noun for a group of elves is a glamour.

But I think my favourite fact was that all Frosts garden centres operate a “real beards” policy on their Father Christmases.


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