Santa knows if you've been bad or good. Besides your mom, no one knows you like Santa Claus. So when a nervous little girl made the natural rite of passage to meet Santa, the 3-year-old couldn't communicate with Father Christmas, so Santa shocked everyone in attendance when he knew and used sign language to ease the mood and communicate with little Mali Williams-Cody, according to the Daily Mail. And those that saw it were touched by this heartwarming moment they were lucky enough to witness.
Santa works with special needs children as a part time gig, which is where he honed his sign language skills. And being Santa, he was intuitive enough to know that little Mali was having difficulty communicating exactly what she wants for Christmas when she visited him at the Cleveland Shopping Centre in Middlesbrough, England. He quickly asked her mother if Mali knew sign language, and the surprised mom said yes, bringing child and Santa together in a story that has gone viral.
"It was an amazing moment," said Mali's mother, Suzanne Williams, according to ITV. "Mali was smiling for ages afterwards."
"Santa wants to make sure every child who visits really does experience what this time of the year is about," said Graeme Skillen, the manager of the Cleveland Shopping Centre. "Santa will take his time with each and every child and will try and put a smile on their faces."
"As soon as it happened, the whole area just went silent. Everyone was just spellbound by it. People were crying in the crowd," Skillen said, according to Today. "Members of our security staff were almost crying. It was just an amazing moment."
"This is all everybody is talking about today," Skillen added. "I've been out and about around the town and around the mall and everyone is talking about this, it's incredible."
