Scarborough Roundtable doing its annual Santa Sleigh

It's to raise money for local charities

Author: Karen LiuPublished 6th Dec 2021

Scarborough Roundtable is doing its annual Santa Sleigh.

The tradition has been on-going for around 45 years which sees the big man himself, his reindeers and elves patrolling the town's streets.

The charitable organisation is travelling around until Friday this week as they try and raise money to help other local causes.

Ben Kitto, community services officer at Scarborough Roundtable, said: "We unfortunately couldn't carry it out last year because of the Covid restrictions, but this year we were very well received that we would be carrying out the 10 nights this year. People specifically go out of their way to make sure they're at home or they come out on to the routes where we're going to be to wave at santa, bring their kids out and see the procession as we go around the town.

"The sleigh that we've had over the last 30 plus years it gave up its ghost last year unfortunately. It had seen the end of its life and we had a task this year to rebuild a sleigh from scratch, which will hopefully last another 30 or 40 years and continue to service the town.

"We need people to donate and give up their time to help man the sleigh because it needs a rudolph to tow it around on an evening, it needs an army of elves to go knocking on doors and we need to work with the local council, but it's worthwhile when you see the children on an evening seeing Santa and hoping that he'll come back to them on Christmas eve.

"We collect money over the 10 nights and then we invite local Scarborough charities to apply for a share of those proceeds early next year, so we'll put all that money that's taken back into the local community and a lot of charities probably 18 to 20 charities will benefit from that pull every year."

Get updates on the routes which start from 6.30pm to 8.30pm on their Facebook page here.

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