Santa Came to Moira (and It Snowed): The 2022 Parade, the Appeal and £371 for NICHS

Moira Community Association’s first Santa parade: local sponsors, a sleigh down Main Street, snow on cue, and £371.24 for NI Chest Heart & Stroke.

Published on December 20, 2022

On Saturday 10 December Santa came down Main Street in Moira on a sleigh, and it snowed. I have watched the footage about forty times and I still can’t quite believe the timing.

Santa Claus holding a bell in front of Poole’s SuperValu in Moira at night during the 2022 Santa parade

The Santa appeal

This was Moira Community Association’s first big event, eight months after we set the association up. The idea was straightforward: raise money from local businesses to bring Santa to the village, parade him down Main Street and Meeting Street, and give whatever was collected on the night to charity.

The businesses were brilliant. Poole’s SuperValu, Grahams, Café Vic-Ryn, Moira Accountancy, Tribe CrossFit, and Councillor Caleb McCready and Alderman Owen Gawith all put their hands in their pockets. That is what paid for Santa’s night out and the selection boxes for the kids.

The night

We set off from the top of the village at half six. I had a camera in one hand because I wanted to document the effort that goes into a thing like this for my own channel: the committee meetings, the risk assessments, the man in the red suit getting his beard straight in a car park.

The exact second we hit play on the Bluetooth speaker on the sleigh, it started to snow. Not a flurry. Proper, heavy, cinematic snow, straight down through the Christmas lights. We went past SuperValu and the bars with the music going, the snow falling and every kid in Moira losing their mind, and I just kept rolling.

I put the video up on Sunday night. It has done more in a week than anything I have ever posted, and none of it is down to the editing. It is the snow, and it is the village.

The result

The night raised £371.24 for Northern Ireland Chest Heart & Stroke. Not a fortune, but for a first event run by a committee that didn’t exist in February, from a standing start, I’ll take it.

What the tech did

I said in April I would write about the digital side once we had run something through it, so here is the honest version.

The Facebook group did the marketing. One post in Moira Community Notice Board and the whole village knew. We spent nothing on promotion.
The forms did the admin. Businesses who wanted to sponsor filled in a form; the committee saw it in a shared table; nobody chased an email thread.
The payment links worked for the businesses who preferred to pay online rather than hand over cash, and every penny is reconciled, which as Treasurer I care about more than I ever expected to.
The video did the rest. It has already brought new people to the group and new offers of help for next year.

Thank you to everyone who sponsored, marshalled, turned up, or stood in the snow. The Santa parade is now a Moira tradition. See you next December.