When media outlets describe Charles Graves, they sometimes call him “the world’s first Deaf Santa.” It’s a tidy headline. It’s also not quite accurate.
The truth is that Deaf Santas have existed in Deaf communities for as long as Deaf schools have hosted holiday parties. What Charles represents isn’t a first — it’s a first to break through to mainstream visibility. The full story includes a number of Deaf men, mostly anonymous, who put on the suit before anyone outside their immediate community noticed.
This is a short tribute to that history.
Deaf schools have always had Santas
Since at least the late 19th century, residential schools for the Deaf in the United States have hosted holiday celebrations for their students. These events almost always included a Santa Claus — and at most Deaf schools, that Santa was a Deaf person on staff, usually a teacher, dorm parent, or beloved older student.
These Santas signed fluently. They knew the children. They knew Deaf culture from the inside. For the students they visited, Santa was not a strange hearing man who couldn’t communicate — he was a known community member dressed up for the occasion, and the magic was real because the connection was real.
Most of these Santas are unrecorded by name. They appeared in school yearbooks, in alumni reunion stories, in the warm memories of generations of Deaf adults who can still tell you who played Santa their second-grade year at Indiana School for the Deaf, or Maryland, or Texas, or Fremont.
None of them ever made the news. They were doing the work, every December, in their own communities, where the work mattered most.
Deaf clubs and community events
Beyond Deaf schools, the network of Deaf clubs that existed across American cities throughout the 20th century hosted their own annual holiday parties — with their own Deaf Santas. Deaf clubs were the social heart of Deaf community life from roughly the 1920s through the 1980s, before the rise of video relay services and internet communication shifted Deaf socializing online.
A typical Deaf club holiday party featured a member volunteer in a Santa suit, distributing gifts to children of club members. The Santa signed; the kids signed back; the whole event ran in ASL from start to finish. For Deaf children whose families couldn’t afford or didn’t prioritize hearing-world Christmas activities, the Deaf club Santa was often the most meaningful Santa visit of their year.
Photographs of Deaf club Santas appear in archives at Gallaudet, in state Deaf association historical collections, and in family albums across the country. We don’t know most of their names. They didn’t put on the suit to be remembered.
Known Deaf Santas of the 20th and 21st centuries
A few Deaf Santas have stepped into more public roles in recent decades:
“Santa John” and other CODA and Deaf-school staff Santas at residential schools across the country have been documented in school newsletters and alumni magazines for generations. These are some of the most consistent Deaf Santa traditions in the country — quiet, local, decades-running.
The Maryland School for the Deaf Santa tradition has been documented for at least the past several decades, with Deaf alumni returning each December to play Santa for current students.
Various Deaf Santas at events run by national Deaf organizations — the National Association of the Deaf, state Deaf associations, regional Deaf youth conferences — have included Deaf Santas as part of their holiday programming for years.
Individual Deaf performers and entertainers have played Santa at private and corporate events. The professional Deaf Santa space, before Charles, was small and decentralized but not nonexistent.
What made Charles different
If Charles Graves wasn’t the first Deaf Santa, what was he the first of?
He was the first to be photographed by the Washington Post. The first to be interviewed by DCist and People Magazine. The first to be the subject of a feature-length documentary. The first to be booked at major commercial venues outside Deaf-specific events. The first whose name many hearing people know.
That breakthrough matters, and not because Charles is more talented or more dedicated than the Deaf Santas who came before him — many of whom were doing the work in their own communities for longer than Charles has been alive. The breakthrough matters because mainstream visibility changes what other Deaf children believe is possible for themselves.
When a Deaf child in Salem or Rochester or Austin sees a Deaf Santa on the front page of a major newspaper, they’re receiving information their parents and grandparents didn’t have: that this role is for them too. That changes career horizons. It changes confidence. It changes the questions Deaf kids ask themselves about who they could be.
What we want to honor
The foundation’s work isn’t about Charles being the first. It’s about Charles being one of many — with a public platform that lets the work scale beyond any single person or any single community.
If you’re reading this and you know of a Deaf Santa whose history isn’t recorded — a great-uncle who played Santa at Fanwood for 30 years, a Deaf teacher at your state school whose name everyone in your dorm knew — we’d love to hear about them. The history of Deaf Santas is mostly oral, mostly local, and mostly preserved in family memories rather than archives.
The foundation is working on documenting more of it over time. Reach out if you have a name, a photograph, or a story we should know.
The point isn’t to crown a single Deaf Santa as the original. The point is to remember that Charles is standing on a long quiet line of Deaf people who put on the suit, signed “Merry Christmas” to a Deaf child, and didn’t need a newspaper to know it mattered.
