For the past seven years, photographer Whitney Stilwell has run The Santa Experience out of Red Stiletto Studios in downtown Norman: a private, “storybook-style” take on the traditional Santa photo session. She traces the idea to Norman Rockwell, and to his habit of finding the meaningful thing inside the ordinary one. There is an obvious joke available here about doing Rockwell in Norman, Oklahoma, and we will leave it alone. What matters is that the sessions are built to make those moments possible rather than to arrange them: one family at a time, no line behind them, no other children waiting their turn in the corner. Santa Greg and Mrs. Claus have been making the trip to Central Oklahoma for about twelve years now, ahead of each Christmas season, partly for the work and partly, he admits, for the weather and the people. He went to the International School for Santa in 2014 and has taken the training seriously since — conventions with the International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas in Branson and in Denver.
A session holds up to five children, so that no one is a background figure in someone else's picture; larger families book a second slot. Parents can send in a wrapped gift for Santa to hand over during the visit, or bring the blanket or the stuffed animal that makes a nervous four-year-old brave. The studio sits on the ground floor, and sensory needs, mobility, and other accommodations are worked out in advance rather than improvised at the door.
Families come back. That is the part Stilwell seems proudest of — the same children turning up year over year, growing several inches between frames, until a shelf of prints becomes an accidental record of a childhood.
The Santa Experience runs a handful of days each season at 226 E. Main St. in downtown Norman. Sessions start at $149; photo collections start at $499. Details at oklahomasanta.com.