Our columnist visits a hand-crafted, ethically-sourced, small-batch Santa experience and pays eighteen pounds for the privilege

A Grotto, But Make It Hackney

I have witnessed many things in the gentrification of North London. I have seen a pub become a cereal cafe and then a co-working space. I have watched a launderette transform into a place that sells four-pound sourdough. But nothing prepared me for the artisanal Santa’s grotto that has opened near Broadway Market, where for eighteen pounds your child may meet a Father Christmas who is, and I quote the signage, hand-crafted, ethically sourced, and small-batch.

I do not know what a small-batch Santa is. I am not sure anyone does. But the North Pole communications had nothing to do with this operation, which is an independent venture by people who have clearly decided that the problem with the traditional grotto was that it was insufficiently curated. I went to investigate, because someone has to, and because I had eighteen pounds and a profound need to understand what is happening to my neighbourhood.

The Reclaimed Timber

The grotto itself was constructed entirely from reclaimed timber, a fact the staff mentioned no fewer than four times, as though the wood’s previous life as a Victorian pub floor lent the experience a moral weight that a normal grotto, built from normal materials, could not achieve. There were Edison bulbs. There is always, in North London, an Edison bulb. The whole thing was lit like a natural wine bar and smelled, faintly, of artisanal cinnamon, which I had not previously known to be different from regular cinnamon.

The Santa, when I finally reached him after queuing behind several parents discussing their children’s screen time, was a vision of curated authenticity. His beard was real. His costume was undyed organic wool. He greeted my entirely imaginary child, because I had come alone, which the staff found deeply suspicious, by asking what the child’s pronouns were and whether they had any dietary requirements for the complimentary oat-milk hot chocolate. Listings I checked through the Time Out London guide described it as an unmissable festive experience, which tells you everything about the current state of festive experiences.

The Eighteen Pounds

Let us discuss the eighteen pounds. For eighteen pounds, in my childhood, you could meet a Santa, receive a present, and have change left over for chips. The North London artisanal grotto offers no present. The present, the staff explained, would be a contradiction of their values, which are about experience rather than consumption. What you receive for your eighteen pounds is the experience of meeting a small-batch Santa in a reclaimed-timber grotto, plus the oat-milk hot chocolate, which costs extra.

I paid. Of course I paid. I am a North Londoner, and we have been trained, over years of four-pound sourdough, to accept that everything now costs more and contains less and that this is somehow a sign of progress. Consumer guidance via the MyLondon news service suggests the artisanal grotto trend is spreading, which means that somewhere, right now, another launderette is being converted into a place where Father Christmas asks about your child’s relationship with technology. Local event listings at the regional events register are now full of them.

What Have We Done

I left the grotto eighteen pounds poorer and several illusions lighter. There is something genuinely lost, I think, when even Santa becomes a curated lifestyle experience, when the simple magic of a child meeting Father Christmas is repackaged as an ethically-sourced, small-batch, reclaimed-timber event with optional oat-milk extras. The actual Santa, the one who actually exists, gives gifts for free to every child on Earth. The North London artisanal grotto charges eighteen pounds and gives you a hot chocolate upsell. I know which one I prefer.

The Real Thing Is Free

Here is what struck me most, walking home along the canal afterward. The genuine article, the actual Santa, has never charged anyone a penny. He does not curate. He does not upsell. He does not ask about your dietary requirements before handing over a present. He simply gives, freely and universally, to everyone, which is the most radical possible rebuke to the eighteen-pound artisanal grotto and everything it represents. The small-batch Santa is a parody of the real one, and the real one is free.

I do not want to be unfair to the people running the grotto. They are, I am sure, lovely, and the reclaimed timber really was very nice. But there is a tipping point at which the relentless curation of every aspect of life stops being charming and starts being a symptom, and an artisanal Santa charging eighteen pounds for an experience with no present feels, to me, like that point. We have curated the magic right out of Christmas and replaced it with a hot chocolate upsell.

For those determined to do Christmas the artisanal way, I will not stop you, and the listings at the events society and the public registry will furnish you with options aplenty. But I would gently suggest that the best version of Santa is the free one, who asks for nothing and gives to everyone, and who would, I suspect, be baffled by the entire concept of a small-batch grotto. If you need a genuinely free festive activity, the games at the diversions index cost nothing and contain no Edison bulbs whatsoever.

I will probably go back next year. That is the tragedy of North London: we complain about the four-pound sourdough and then we buy it, we mock the artisanal grotto and then we queue for it. We have been thoroughly captured. But somewhere above us, the actual Santa was flying north, having given the children of Hackney their presents for free, asking nothing in return, and I like to think he glanced down at the reclaimed-timber grotto with its Edison bulbs and wondered, as I did, what on earth we have done to ourselves.

SOURCE: https://santaclaus.top