When is the Santa Sleigh out and about?
Our Sleigh will be out most nights from 1st to 23rd December in the run up to Christmas, between around 6-8pm.
There may be some nights we can’t come out if the weather or road conditions are bad, if we don’t have enough volunteers or a driver.
What time is Santa out, can you come earlier/later?
The Sleigh is out between 6-8pm. As most of our volunteers work full time we cannot come out any earlier. We aim to finish by 8pm each night – we don’t think it is fair to expect our fantastic volunteers to do more that 2 hours walking per night, plus we also don’t want to be out too late for our younger Santa Fans who need to be in bed.
When will you be coming round my street?
We publish “Santa’s Nice List” which is a list of the areas we intend to visit. We aim to work through this list and visit each area in turn. Due to factors beyond our control (weather, volunteer numbers etc) we do not publish specific dates ahead of schedule. Look out on our Facebook page or the News Page each day, though, to see where we will be visiting that night.
My street isn’t listed on your Nice List, does this mean you won’t be visiting my street?
The list would be far too long to list absolutely every street, but we do aim to visit all streets in Calne (that we are able to get the Santa Float down). Look on the “Nice List” for a
street close to yours, in all likelihood we will visit you on the same night as this street.
Can you make a special stop at my house?
We would love to be able to make special visits, but sadly this is not possible. We have an ever-growing list of streets we need to cover before Christmas, so have to keep to our schedule.
You visited my street already, but I missed you – can you come back?
Calne is a rapidly growing town and it gets harder each year to get round everyone – there isn’t time to revisit streets that we have already been round. If you check our Facebook page or the Santa Tracker on our website you can track where we are each night and could come and find us. We can also be found at the following locations:
- Sainsburys – Saturday 14th December, 10am-1pm
- Best Ever Brownie Company, Foxham – Saturday 21st December, times TBC
- Tesco – Christmas Eve, 10am-2pm
I heard you last night but you didn’t come round?
It is possible that we will visit you on another night. Our music can sometimes be heard over a long distance, so it might be that we just haven’t got round to you yet (or it was near the end of the night and we decided to stop before getting to your street). We do aim to visit all streets in Calne (that we are able to get the Santa Float down), keep an eye out on our Facebook page or our News page for information about where we will be visiting next.
Will you be knocking on my door?
Yes, we will be knocking on doors this year, after some feedback last year that people missed us/didn’t hear us. If you would prefer we not knock on your door, then please put a note on your door and we will pass your house by.
Do I have to make a donation?
No – Although our Santa Sleigh is fantastic way to raise funds that we can then use to help our community, there is no obligation for you to donate to us. Calne Lions love bringing our Sleigh round the streets of Calne and surrounding villages because people enjoy seeing the sleigh and getting into the Christmas spirit. If you see or hear us, come out and give us a smile or a wave, we love to see all your happy faces!
I would like to donate but don’t have any cash, what can I do?
There are many ways you can donate to Calne Lions.
When out with Santa, our collectors will have card readers or you can donate up to £20 by text message.
Text SLEIGH and the donation amount to 70470, for example to donate £1 text SLEIGH to 70470, to donate £5 text SLEIGH5 to 70470 or to donate £10 text SLEIGH10 to 70470 (texts cost your donation plus one standard rate message)
Other ways to donate can be found on our Ways to Donate page.
What happens to my donation?
Your donation goes into our “Facilitation Fund” where it is used to help local individuals or organisations who contact us asking for help. Recent donations include £500 for Calne Community Christmas, a regular monthly donation of £200 to Calne Food Bank and various donations to local schools to help with transport costs for visits and days out.
I missed you last night but would like to donate, how can I do this?
If you would like to donate, please visit our Ways to Donate page on the website, for more details.
You have cancelled Tonight’s Santa, citing bad weather – it’s not that bad, why can’t you come out?
We don’t make the decision to cancel Santa lightly. If the weather is particularly wet, it isn’t fair to expect our brilliant volunteers to be out walking in heavy rain for 2 hours.
If the conditions are icy, we have to think about the safety of our driver, volunteers and anyone who chooses to come out to greet us. Although your street may not seem too bad, we have to be able to safely retrieve our sleigh (which is roughly 2 tonnes) from our storage site on the outskirts of town and then tow it around. I am sure no one wants the sleigh to skid into their car.
Ultimately if anything happens to the sleigh, our towing vehicle or our volunteers then that could be the end of our Santa visits for the year. In order to safeguard our future ability to run Santa, we may sometime have to make the hard decision to not go out for a night or two.
We will still do our best to get around the Town and Villages and make up for lost time, wherever possible.