Spreading Holiday Cheer

Ah, you gotta love our Downtown Safety/Hospitality and Maintenance employees, better known as SAMs. They do much more than keep Downtown DC clean, safe and friendly. During the holiday season, a few SAMs assume a whole new persona, much to the delight of Downtown workers, residents and visitors, who find them in festive situations, but unusual attire.

Take the Downtown Holiday Market, the outdoor marketplace currently underway through Friday, December 23, between 7th and 9th Streets in front of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and National Portrait Gallery. Every year, a few SAMs don holiday costumes at the Market to entertain the masses. Maybe you’ve seen them but didn’t recognize them? The SAMs were those larger than life characters strutting and bouncing around as a Christmas tree, Nutcracker, snowman, and gingerbread lady. Of course, our uniformed SAMs (in red jackets and caps) are also at the Market to dispense information and provide helpful directions.

On Sunday, the SAMs began enlivening the holiday spirits of little ones gathered at the Warner Theatre (513 13th Street) for the popular and very seasonal Nutcracker ballet, running through Saturday, December 24. You can also catch the SAMs in costumes, a long tradition restarted this year following a brief hiatus, on Friday, December 16 and at the last Nutcracker performance.

And this Saturday, December 17, the SAMs will once again amuse and charm 100 neighborhood kids preregistered for the 13th Annual Winter Wonderland event hosted by the Walter E. Washington Convention Center (801 Mount Vernon Place) in partnership with the Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 2C. At this event, eagerly anticipated by both parents and youngsters alike, the SAMs will add their special brand of savior-faire.

We want to extend a huge “Thank You!” to those joyful SAMs, and all SAMs, really, who are on Downtown streets seven days a week, 362 days a year!