Interview with Christian Gainer and Jim Miller
Photos courtesy of Santa’s Village

Christian Gainer (general manager) and Jim Miller (marketing manager and Santa’s Helper) of Santa’s Village, a popular theme park in Jefferson, New Hampshire, discuss what sets the family-owned seasonal enterprise apart in a crowded industry.

Who founded Santa’s Village?
Christian: Normand and Cecile Dubois, who were entrepreneurs in nearby Lancaster. In the early 1950s, they owned a successful dry-cleaning business, yet something was missing. One day, they were driving down Route 2 when a deer jumped in front of their car; their toddler, Elaine, excitedly asked if it was one of Santa’s. Inspired, Normand purchased the land in Jefferson where the deer had crossed for $900 and opened a theme park in 1953 with just three entertainment attractions. Elaine is my now seventy-five-year-old mother, and the park is run by me, my sister, and her husband.

Is your location a positive or negative for your business?
Jim: It’s both! Being located in the White Mountains, we get visitors primarily from New England but also from all over the country. However, there aren’t a lot of supporting businesses around us—a few hotels and a couple of restaurants—so people usually take a road trip to get here. Our challenge is to make that drive worth it, which is why we’re committed to creating a premium theme park experience.

Christian: The average guest comes from around two hours away and is doing so with children. That shows what kind of attraction we are. And once first-timers get here, they quickly realize they’ll return. It’s not a one-off type of park: people are usually starting or continuing a long-time tradition. “Pure Joy. Family Style.” isn’t just our brand tagline; it drives everything we do.

Speaking of, who is your target audience, and how do you encourage such revisits?
Jim: Our focus is on families with kids from ages two to twelve, but generations often visit together. Everybody thinks their kids outgrow Santa at a certain point, but we like to say that you never outgrow Christmas or fun. And that’s what you find here. We have a lot of visitors who have been coming for ten years or more.

We chose our tagline because of how clean, joyful, and nostalgic our park is. With most others, people try to do as much as they can, wait in long lines, and pay expensive prices for food, whereas it’s the exact opposite here. Guests will occasionally ask me how long it takes to get through everything, and I always tell them you don’t “get through” Santa’s Village—you take your time enjoying yourself.

Christian: To Jim’s point, our park encourages more of a leisurely day savoring each other’s company on clean, beautiful grounds. One way we foster this vibe is by only selling online tickets and setting a capacity every day, which makes it easy to have fun without feeling crowded or experiencing FOMO. In addition, our employees aren’t going to get overwhelmed, allowing them to treat guests with kindness and patience.

Was there a risk in limiting daily capacity?
Jim: We discussed it for a long time. But around a decade ago, we realized that it was possible to be too popular when we were totally overrun by guests at our annual New Year’s Eve party. So we started limiting the event’s attendance the next year, and that made it so much more pleasant for everybody.

We likewise discovered that we were noticeably more popular on Saturdays than Sundays during the holidays and eventually put a limit on those days as well—and it completely leveled out attendance across the weekend. Remarkably, we still get the same number of paying guests in December, if not a little bit more, which is counterintuitive from a business perspective.

How is being family owned advantageous?
Jim: We couldn’t have limited capacity if we were trying to satisfy private-equity investors or stockholders, who want to collect as much money as possible. When the owner-operators are really involved with the business, they can pivot their focus and prioritize the visitor experience. That’s ultimately how this place succeeds.

Christian: That’s exactly right. It’s not necessarily about profit margins and dividends. We have a different business approach and culture that have worked for over seventy years, and it bonds our team and fosters retention. Our youngest employees start at age fourteen and will sometimes work here through college, and our longest-tenured employee has been with us for over fifty years.

Christian, do you ever feel the temptation to sell to a larger theme park operator?
Christian: On frustrating days, the temptation is sometimes there. Trying to make over five hundred employees and hundreds of thousands of guests happy can be a lot. But when I reflect on why I’m doing it, that temptation disappears. Honestly, being third-generation owners of the park and growing up in it, this isn’t just a business to my sister and me. We don’t even like to say that we’re “owners” of Santa’s Village; we prefer to call ourselves its caretakers. Our family pride goes very far, and we take the sacrifices our parents and grandparents made seriously—we know what we must live up to. So, no, we won’t sell.

Santa’s Village is open just eight months a year, and only daily for about ten weeks of that, yet you’ve succeeded for decades. How do you do it?
Christian: We don’t have the margins that other theme parks have, but we make it work. A lot of our employees wear different hats, we’re very efficient in what we do, and by putting out a premium product, we can charge a bit of a premium price for admission. We don’t need any sales gimmicks such as discounts to entice people to come here.

Jim: When you look at all the five-star reviews we get, you’ll see that many of them mention how friendly and helpful the staff is, which shows that it’s as great a place to work at as it is to visit. If you make people feel that way, then you don’t need huge margins to succeed: its all about the park and the experience. That’s what makes Santa’s Village a unique business.

For more info, visit santasvillage.com