Santa makes an early visit
Father Christmas delivers in Howden
Santa went around the doors in West Lothian dropping off presents to raise cash for a local nursery.
Local man, Sean Buckam, initially decided to dress up and visit a small group of children at Howden Preschool Playgroup.
However, when he went looking for donations he was overwhelmed with offers and decided to do something bigger.
Rather than a visit to the nursery dressed up as Santa, Sean decided instead that he would go around the doors in the local community dropping off presents.
Sean went around the doors in Howden on Sunday (December 20) and handed out presents to over 70 children.
Parents were asked to make a small donation to the nursery if they could afford to do so.
Sean’s children EmilyRose, aged four, and Willow, aged two, came along and helped Santa.
His partner, Sinead, explained: “Our children attend Howden Preschool Playgroup.
“It ’ s a ver y sma l l independent playgroup based within St Andrew’s Primary School annex building.
“I have been a part of the committee of the playgroup for two years now, and we are always looking for ways to raise funds for them.
“Obviously, due to Covid, we lost three months of fees which would normally pay wages, upgrade equipment, and just general upkeep of the playgroup. We also can’t do our usual tombola, coffee mornings and race nights this year either.
“My fiancé, Sean, works for Co-operative funeralcare, and has a lot of contacts within Co-op food stores.
“On the off chance, he asked Howden West Coop for donations of sweets to give to the kids, we had originally planned to buy the selection boxes ourselves.
“Howden Co-op gratefully donated 20 selection boxes to us, which is amazing. This then led to Craigshill, Ladywell and Eliburn all
donating as well. We ended up with 40 selection boxes, 60 tubes of smarties and fruit pastilles, share bars of chocolates and share packs of sweets too. More than we could ever have imagined.
“All we asked for was a small cash donation in return for a Santa visit with his elf and reindeer ( being the wives and children of
Santa and elf ) which will all be donated to Howden Playgroup.
“Something that was originally meant to be 18 little kids getting a Santa visit in roughly 15 minutes, has now turned into over 70 children with a sociallydistanced visit from Santa and his elf to every street in Howden.”