Story by Emily Robertson
This Christmas season, a local Bowling Green man is making his list and checking it twice to ensure that all south-central Kentucky children experience the magic of Santa and giving a different perspective on Santa.
Originally from Salisbury, North Carolina, Jason Drye moved to Bowling Green six years ago for work, but it wasn’t until 2022 that he realized the area was lacking a very important person to represent people of color at the holidays.
“I was searching for a Santa to take my son to at the time,” Drye says. “I wanted to try and find a black Santa because I really believe that representation matters. We found a location offering a black Santa for pictures with children, but when we got to the event, I noticed how tired and worn out the man looked. He had driven eight hours for the event and was exhausted. My son was so small at the time that he didn’t notice how tired Santa looked, but I was with my girlfriend and I said ‘gosh, I could do better than that!’ She looked at me and said ‘well, you should!’”
While Drye was hesitant at first to try and take on the role of Kris Kringle, that next April he decided to give the job a try and he enrolled at Charles W. Howard Santa School in Michigan, or the “Harvard of Santa schools in the United States," according to Drye.
“Santa school is three to four days and you are in classes from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” Drye says. “There are probably between 700 to 1,000 Santas that participate each year, with lots of performers using it as a reunion of sorts to get together each year. I learned so much about all aspects of the job, from performers insurance, to contracts, to finding the best suit.”
Once he got back from Santa school, Jolly Santa Jason was born and Drye hit the ground running with tackling social media and trying to get the word out about his new endeavor. While he didn’t expect much during his first year, he ended up booking five events and after the success of his first year, he already has eight events lined up for this Christmas season. Drye says while he would call himself introverted, he loves people and the role of Santa fits well with his experience in theater growing up and his naturally kind demeanor.
“My mindset is that everyone deserves patience and everyone deserves to be seen,” Drye says. “I committed to this and I want to give it my all at each event because I’m representing something that is full of so much magic and memory-making for so many people. You don’t want anyone to walk away from their experience with Santa with a bad memory.”
Drye says his most favorite parts of being Santa are the smiles and the wonderment you see in children’s eyes, but an added bonus is seeing adults light up as well. “I’m a part of the Santa’s of Color Coalition and we went to the International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas event and we had some adults come by and two grown men stopped us and had tears in their eyes,” Drye says. “They never thought they would see a black Santa in their lifetime. You could tell they felt seen and felt validated to see someone in this role that looked like them."
Drye says he draws inspiration from many iconic Santas in pop culture, from Tim Allen’s rendition, to the Santa from Miracle on 34th Street and local icon, Santa Bob, but he says his biggest influence in his role as Santa and in his life, in general, is Jesus
Christ.
“Without Jesus, I would be nothing,” Drye says. “Everything I do would be for nothing. This whole Santa thing is part of my ministry. I try to hint at it in subtle ways with how I approach things. Some people don’t respond to overt gospel, but I hope they see Jesus in how I
interact with people and I hope I can point to the true meaning of the season in small ways.”
When he is not playing the role of the big man, Drye enjoys spending time with his girlfriend Amanda Bragg and his four-year-old son, Ethan, as well as playing guitar. He says his job as dad is his greatest accomplishment and much of the reason he took on the role of Santa.
“I have a drive to be the very best dad I can be to my son,” Drye says. “And that also drives me to be great as Santa. I want children like my son to have these beautiful core memories of meeting Santa and feeling the magic that he brings.”
In the future, Drye hopes that his role as Santa is so busy that it could possibly become a full-time gig. He wants to expand to performing for other holidays with ideas for Easter and possibly Kwanzaa already in the works. While he’s worked hard to grow his character from his first idea a year and a half ago, his greatest challenge going forward may be juggling his magical seasonal work and how to approach the topic with his growing son.
“The first time he saw me in my suit, he didn’t recognize me at all,” Drye says. “But more recently, he has left events and commented ‘that Santa looks like Daddy.’”