COLOGNE, Minn. – In our younger years, our brains are wired for new adventures. But this is a story about an older fella.
“Fifteen-hundred years,” jokes the man in the white beard and red suit.
At 82, Hilary Drees is in a role he once fought like the dickens to avoid.
“I didn’t think I was capable of doing it,” says the reluctant Santa. “I didn’t think I had the charisma to do that.”
Yet here he is, greeting children awaiting Santa’s arrival at Z’s Trees Christmas tree farm in Cologne.
John Zimmerman, the owner of Z’s Trees, had his work cut out for him when he concocted this idea.
John had been Hilary’s veterinarian before Hilary sold his milk cows and retired. John hired Hilary to help on the tree farm. Not long after the arm-twisting began.
“I said Hilary I'm going to fire you. He said, “What did I do wrong?” I said, “Nothing, but you're going to be promoted.”
Hilary wanted nothing to do with it. “What am I going to say to those kids?” Hilary asked at the time. “I don't know about toys.”
Yet, Hilary finally decided he would comply - under one condition, which he presented to his wife, Irene. If he was going to be Santa, she was going to come along as his Mrs. Claus.
The suggestion did not sit well at home. “When I told her we're going to do this, ‘No way are we going to do this,’” Hilary recalls Irene telling him.
But 16 years later, Hilary and Irene are still at it.
Hillary sits on one side of a shed at Z’s Trees, a child on his knee, while Irene stands on the other, serving to children cookies she’s baked in a wood burning oven. “Merry Christmas,” she tells each as she flashes a kind smile.
“It's so sweet,” says a tree farm customer. “They're one of the reason's we came back to this place in particular.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Claus,” says a grateful little boy, clutching his warm cookie.
These are the moments Hilary and Irene would have missed if they had followed their first instinct to steer clear of this job.
“He's been saying the last five years, ‘This is my last year,’” says Todd Drees, Hilary and Irene’s son.
Yet through Irene’s heart surgery and Hilary’s diabetes and five heart bypasses, year after year, they keep coming back to the job neither of them wanted.
Hilary holds tight to a little girl who’s run into his arms. “Everybody needs a hug, even Santa needs hugs,” he tells her.
The greatest gift not found beneath a tree is an opportunity. This Christmas may you too unwrap yours.