Steve Hendrix, of Bristol, sits in his home on Snowball Hill Road on Friday, Dec. 6. Hendrix, an employee of the Bristol Parks and Recreation Department, has owned his own auto repair shop, sheep farm, and antique motorcycle business. During the winter months, Hendrix travels New England, helping out Santa Claus. (Johnathan Riley photo)
Around December, Santa Claus is busier than ever with his public appearances and building toys for all the children who’ve been good this year, but one of the most remarkable lessons learned from the jolly fellow is that of teamwork and collaboration.
Mr. Claus may be the Christmas star, but the legends say he has a team of reindeer and a workshop full of elves helping put together a holiday that can bring out the best in people.
One of Santa’s helpers is Steve Hendrix of Bristol. When the Bristol Parks and Recreation employee isn’t restoring an antique motorcycle or fixing up a fence down at Pemaquid Point Lighthouse, he’s lending Santa Claus a hand by visiting families around New England on his behalf.
A Massachusetts native, Hendrix is originally from Marlborough, but he grew up in Northborough, and spent nearly 40 years in Westborough, operating his own automotive repair shop, called Steve’s Auto and Truck.
As if running his automotive shop wasn’t enough, for about 10 years Hendrix also maintained an antique motorcycle business, a sheep farm that produced it’s own yarn, and a cordwood business.
“At one point it was kind of silly,” Hendrix said. “I had the shop that was going full bore, and had the farm which was 45 minutes away. On my lunch breaks I’d go cut wood.”
Hendrix said the farm, called Bittersweet Farm in North Brookfield, Mass., had around 60 sheep, 16 llamas, seven beehives, and 400-500 chickens at one time.
“I’d feed everybody at 4:30 in the morning, go back to the shop, throw in a quick 12 hours there, turn around, come back, feed everybody,” he said.
Hendrix started helping out Santa Claus in 2014 when he was approached by neighbors for a holiday event.
“I had always fantasized about (being Santa) for some reason,” Hendrix said. “I’ve always had long whiskers. At the time that weren’t all the way white. I had no idea it’d be this fulfilling.”
Attending so many Santa Claus events, year after year, Hendrix said he’s developed relationships with some of the children he sees.
“Growing with this, kids that come back year after year, they know you’re the real Santa and they know the rest are all helpers,” he said. “It’s the biggest compliment.”
Part of helping Santa Claus means becoming a safe space for children and adults alike, Hendrix said, and part of the honor of donning the red suit is be able to be there for people in times of joy and sorrow.
Hendrix said he came to realize he had been preparing the help Santa Claus for years. He recalled speaking with customers over the years at his auto repair shop who were dealing with their own trials, including numerous cancer diagnosis.
“When you’re speaking to somebody you just found out has cancer, you don’t have to treat them any different,” he said. “They’re still the same person they were 10 minutes ago. They still got the same history. They still got the same problems.”
In 2016, Hendrix was diagnosed with lung cancer and needed to have one of his lungs removed. While the journey to being cancer free has been difficult, Hendrix said he has taken some good from the experience.
“Some of the best things I’ll ever learn in my life came from getting sick” he said.
Hendrix said he learned that one of the most soothing things for someone who is sick is to speak with others who have also experienced illness. Going through cancer allowed him to associate with others in a way that was meaningful in his own life and Santa Claus.
“When you speak to (parents or kids) that aren’t going to come out the other side, that gets very difficult,” he said.
Hendrix said he’s been able to comfort those who are in the throes of terminal illness.
“Through the years, the Santa Claus stuff, that’s been a huge part of it, is a really, really big part of it,” he said.
Hendrix said he has been cancer free for eight years.
In 2021, Hendrix moved to Snowball Hill Road in Bristol, buying the property from clients of his wife, Jean, who runs her own bookkeeping and tax services business, Hendrix Tax.
Steve Hendrix said he and his wife came to check out the property, with no real intention of buying, until they started noticing some Christmas-related signs that pushed them toward purchasing.
“At that point we were already six or seven years into the crazy Santa Claus stuff, so we have no earthly thought of this having anything do with Santa Claus,” Hendrix said. “We started looking at it again and thought ‘Snowball Hill Road?’ huh that’s kind of cool, and one mile from Christmas Cove, and when we checked out the house, all the doors has sleigh bells on them. The community and everybody in it: we’re damn lucky to have ended up here.”
Shortly after moving to Snowball Hill Road, Hendrix said he started working maintenance at Bristol Parks and Recreation. Hendrix said his work philosophy has always been that he can learn how to do most things himself and hiring somebody for every job that requires knowledge he doesn’t have, doesn’t make sense.
Hendrix said he gets that mindset from his mother who grew up in Lake Portage where the community was under 300 people and needing to be able to learn how to deal with new issues was part of the lifestyle.
“I didn’t realize that all the different things I’ve done in my life would come in so handy,” he said.
In January, back-to-back storms that brought historic levels of surge damaged the bell house along the shore and parts of the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse including a white picket fence circling the fisherman’s museum.
Initial estimates for the fence totaled over $40,000 but Hendrix was able to repair it for about $1,400.
“You can get reckless and spend a bunch of money, but it doesn’t solve problems, right?” he said. “You can be thrifty, but not to the point where you’re redoing thing every day because you made a mess out of it.”
When he isn’t helping Santa Claus or fulfilling his duties as a Bristol Parks employee, Hendrix plans on building his latest motorcycle in the garage.
“I just got to get started on it, but I’ve got to get through Santa Claus season first,” he said.
Hendrix travels all over New England working for Santa Claus, totaling about 460 hours from October to Christmas Eve, but locally he can be found at Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railway Museum in Alna.
When people and children ask Hendrix if he’s the “real Santa,” he said he likes to leave the mystery open.
“I could very well be the real guy, but you just don’t know,” he said, grabbing his belly and laughing. “I could be him, but everybody knows that we have helpers, and I like to leave them guessing.”
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