Welcome to All

[Gator Claus]

Welcome to one and all to the Palm Tree Santas Forum here on ClausNet. First of all please send a Thank You to Santa Reilly for creating a place for us. Thank you Mike!

The Palm Tree Santas, also known as Florida's "Sandie" Clauses, held their first meeting in September 2006 with a small handful of Santas and Mrs. Clauses. Since then we have grown to a membership of over 70 Santas, Mrs. Clauses and Elves with the purpose of bringing together those special and principled gentlemen and women who carry on the history and traditions of Santa Claus. We gather several times a year in various towns of our wonderful home state of Florida to share, educate and perpetuate the spirit of love and giving.

We are lead by our Chairman, Santa Bob Elkin, our WebMaster, Santa Jim Williams, and our Advisory Board of 9 couples. Many of us are honored to be members of Santa-America and together with and because of our membership we bring Love, Hope, and Joy to the Florida communities at several events throughout the year. Last year we held our first formal "Christmas in July" event in Tarpon Springs complete with parade, children's reindeer games and special classes for children to become honorary elves. We have been asked to return again to Tarpon Springs this July to continue what we hope will become a tradition. Our "get togethers" are sprinkled throughout the year and include a weekend of fun, education, sharing and "collecting smiles" so that we may become the best Santas, Mrs. Clauses and Elves that we can be!

We invite you to visit our website, www.PalmTreeSantas.com , often for the latest happenings and to join us for any of our events, you will not regret a moment of it! We hope to see everyone in Gatlinburg next week for Celebrate Santa. We will have a few special surprises for you!

[Santa Bob Elkin]

HO HO HO! Thank you indeed to Santa Rielly for allowing PTS a discussion forum on Clausnet! And an extra thanks to Gator Claus for writing such a great welcome to all of you. In addition to inviting Clausnet members to perhaps discover more about the "Sandie" Clauses, we hope more of our Palm Tree Santas will now join Clausnet and start benefiting from the tremendous wealth of knowledge and resources available to us here on Clausnet.

We plan three get togethers/meetings each year, Celebrate our Season, the 2nd weekend of January, The Annual Spring Fling, (weekend after Memorial Day) and our September "Event To Remember" (often coincides with Santa Tim's IUSC) Of course, we have other events, the annual PTS float in the Gators Homecoming parade, Christmas in July in Tarpon Springs and others.

Most of our planned events consist of Hotel stays of 1 or 2 nights, Group Dinners/Lunches/Breakfast, Roundtable Discussions, Workshops and a lot of sharing of brotherly love. Our goal is to hold these get togethers in various cities around the state. However, we do seem to have a fondness for St. Augustine and will return again on June 4th, 5th & 6th in 2010 to this historic city for the third year in a row!!! We all love having 50 or more of us riding the Red Train around town, and around town some more, singing Christmas Carols, then stopping for strolling, shopping and posing for pictures throughout the Historic District.

Please consider this as an invitation, anytime any of our brother Santas might be visiting Florida whenever we are holding any of our events, you will be welcome to join us. We accept PTS members with designer or natural beards and of course elves with or without pointed ears! We also have welcomed as PTS members several Santas from neighboring states.

Our webmaster, Santa Jim Williams has done fantastic work in creating a masterpiece of a website www.palmtreesantas.com

and is continually keeping it up to date. We invite you to visit, on the home page you will see a collection of group shots through the years, click on Find A Santa for an interactive map of Florida where you can locate various members throughout the state. Santa Jim created and maintains an updated PTS Membership Directory, complete with each member's address, phone numbers, emails and a color picture of each Santa & Ms Claus! Santa Jim also created and maintains a PTS store where members can purchase PTS T-shirts, caps, aprons, suit bags, PTS cards and a variety of other PTS items with the PTS logo!

Again, many thanks to Santa Rielly for allowing the Palm Tree Santas their little space on ClausNet. We hope you all will visit from time to time! and maybe come break bread in person, should you be visiting Florida sometime in the future!

Collecting smiles,

Santa Bob Elkin

[I Believe]

gator claus...just went to your site and it looks like so much fun! not to mention the yummy food..i was raised in jacksonville and married a westerner and here i be in southern utah...my daughter lives in tampa and we go out 2 or 3 times a year...i'd be at a sonnys or a waffle house any day! good luck to all the santas in florida!