Note from the foundation: this article is a short public-facing profile of Charles. A longer biography — with more of his own voice and more of the early years — is in development and will live at deafsantaclaus.org/charles-graves when complete.
If you’ve seen the documentary, you’ve met Charles Graves. If you’ve read the Washington Post profile or the People Magazine feature or the DCist interview, you’ve met him. If you’ve sat with your child on his lap at one of dozens of events across the country since 2023, you’ve met him.
This is a short version of who he is when the lights aren’t on him.
The basics
Charles Graves grew up Deaf in a hearing family in the southern United States. ASL is his primary language. He is married to Kari Graves, who appears with him in much of the documentary, and they have children — both Deaf and hearing — who are deeply involved in Charles’s work and his life.
He bears, as the press has repeatedly noted, a strong resemblance to the iconic image of Santa Claus — full white beard, kind eyes, broad build. It’s the kind of resemblance that produces strangers approaching him in airports year-round, not just in December.
How he started
Charles didn’t plan to become a Deaf Santa Claus. He started appearing in Santa attire at Deaf community events and Deaf school holiday parties because friends and community members asked him to — the resemblance was hard to ignore, and the children at those events deserved a Santa they could actually communicate with.
What happened in those early appearances was the thing that eventually became the foundation: he watched Deaf children realize, sometimes for the first time, that they could just talk to Santa Claus. No interpreter. No workaround. No awkward verbal-with-gestures hybrid. A Deaf child signing “I want a bicycle” to Charles and Charles signing back “What color?” was a moment that didn’t exist anywhere else in those kids’ lives.
Charles has said in multiple interviews that he didn’t set out to be famous for this. He just kept showing up because the work mattered.
Santa school
As Charles’s appearances grew, so did his commitment to doing the work professionally rather than informally. He enrolled in Santa school — making him one of the only Deaf students the school had hosted, and requiring the school to accommodate ASL interpretation across the multi-day program.
The Santa school experience is documented in the film. It included real adaptation by the school’s faculty, real frustration with the limits of available access, and real success in Charles emerging as a fully credentialed professional Santa with the same training as his hearing peers.
What he does now
Charles makes appearances throughout the year — concentrated in November and December, but extending earlier and later as the foundation’s work has grown. He travels for screenings of the documentary, leads Q&A sessions, meets with Deaf families and Deaf advocacy organizations in each city, and continues the in-chair work that the foundation was built around.
He also remains the primary spokesperson for the foundation’s work, doing interviews, speaking at events, and serving as the human face of an organization that’s working to outlive any single person’s career.
What you should know if you meet him
Charles is approachable. He’s warm with strangers and patient with hearing people trying to sign. If you don’t sign, he’ll meet you where you are — he’s used to communicating across the gap.
He prefers to be addressed directly rather than through interpreters when possible. If you have an interpreter with you, the etiquette is to face Charles and address him; the interpreter will relay.
He answers genuine questions from Deaf children, including the ones their hearing parents try to wave off. Children sometimes ask him about being Deaf, about being a real Santa, about how the reindeer work. He answers them all on the terms they asked.
Why he matters
Charles’s significance isn’t that he’s the only Deaf Santa Claus — other Deaf Santas have existed before him and alongside him. His significance is that he’s the first to bring mainstream visibility to the work. A Deaf child in a small town who reads about Charles in the local paper or sees him on Today now knows something Deaf children twenty years ago didn’t know — this is a thing a person like them can do. That shift, multiplied over many children and many years, is what the foundation is built around.
Charles will not be the last Deaf Santa Claus. That’s the point.
