Photo: Erik Grenabos awesome brother.

Today’s guest blogger is Erik Grenabo, a student, musician, jack of all trades and lover of life. He currently lives and studies English in Skövde and is one out of two Eric Grenabos worldwide.

For many Swedes, Karl-Bertil Jonssons Christmas is a given element of Christmas Eve. This is the case in my family as well. A few years ago me and my brother asked ourselves if we couldn’t think of a way to spread the holiday spirit in a similar way as the young Mr. Jackson does in the Tage Danielsson story.

The idea of the Santa drive-by was born pretty early on. The concept was to buy inexpensive gifts from a second hand shop, dress up like Santa Claus, ride around in car and hand out presents to strangers.

Our car, a crappy ‘96 Nissan Micra that has definitely seen better days, was in our eyes a magnificent steed on which we rode around the streets to spread the glad tidings of Christmas. The beauty however, lies in the eye of the beholder, and most would probably rather describe our mode of transportation as a tired donkey; reluctantly kicked around and constantly hoping that the trip would soon be over. Majestic thoroughbred or half dead donkey, the Micra fulfilled its task and when we drove past the square into our little cozy town, our entrance could only be likened to Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. The Christmas spirit was overwhelming.

A drive-by can look like this:

1. We stop outside someone’s house.
2. The Santa that isn’t wheelman (Shotgun Santa) goes to knock on the door.
3. The owner of the door, and hopefully of the house, opens to find himself eye to eye with Santa himself.
4. The package is delivered with holiday greetings.
5. Santa runs back to the idling Micra, in which the Santa driver is waiting.
6. The Santa driver rides them away.

As we were spreading Christmas joy we thought of a new way to distribute the gifts. Last year we drove up on a sidewalk next to a tired pizza maker who was on his way home after a hard day’s work, rolled down the passenger window and handed over a wrapped china duck, which we purchased for the reasonable sum of five crowns at our local second hand store.

Several gifts were also handed out without the assistance of our eminent steed. A Santa drive-by works just as well without a motor vehicle.

In short: Go out into the population and distribute gifts, spreading joy and having fun at the same time!