Santa's Christmas sleigh collection 2019

Santa's Christmas sleigh collection 2019

By Frank Thompson

The 2019 Seaford Rotary Christmas Collections started on Monday 2^nd December with Santa and his team of elves out and around Seaford for 17 weekday nights and one Saturday evening between the hours of 5.30 to 8.30 pm.  Some of the evenings were very wet whilst a good number of other evenings were dry, but very windy.

Santa’s sleigh also visited Seaford “Magic” where Florence (pictured) helped Father Christmas and the Mayor of Seaford, Nazish Adil switch on the Christmas Lights. In addition, there were four static collections in Broad Street during the day on three of the Saturdays in December and on Christmas Eve

The team accompanying Santa’s sleigh for each evening comprised Santa, his two Drivers - one for the Sleigh and one for Support,  a Senior Elf (or Contact Man) - who is in charge of the other eight elves, directing them along the routes to  collect donations .  There are also two more elves who count the proceeds of the collection. The Static Collections run a similar but smaller support team.

For 2019,  83% of those who took part in the Seaford Rotary Christmas collection were Club Rotarians, some of them helping on many nights throughout December.   A further 17% were friends or family members who volunteered to help Santa’s team cover the streets of Seaford. Seaford Rotary is most grateful to them for their time and efforts. 

The Christmas collection was a great success and Seaford Rotary would like to thank the people of Seaford once again for their kind generosity . This year they raised a total £10,716, which was £31 up on last year in spite of having one less Static Collection. The collections will go into our Charitable Trust to support local Good Causes in 2020.