They call him Wheels because he’s happiest in motion, which is unusual for a man whose job is to sit on a throne and be a destination. Leonard answers to both names, though. “Santa” in December, “Wheels” the rest of the year, and sometimes both when life needs a higher dose.

The aviation fair wanted tram drivers. Sensible hats, neon vests, volunteers who can point to bathrooms on a map shaped like a runway. Wheels turned up in red velvet and black boots that had known snowbanks and summer asphalt. July sun scowled at him. He winked back.

Children boarded the tram as if boarding a story. The grown-ups became accomplices. Even pilots—those sworn to realism by certified physics—saluted with candy-cane grins. Wheels narrated the route like a sleigh manifest. “On your left, a P-51 that once outran a thunderstorm. On your right, a man who has eaten three funnel cakes and still believes in himself.”

He is good at jokes because he rehearses compassion. That’s the secret. The laugh opens the door; the care walks through. Between stops, he notices the boy whose cheeks are pale in the hot light, the tired mother leaning against logistics, the elderly couple whose hands fit like conversation. He adjusts speed to make time feel less adversarial.

When weather turned rude in the afternoon—thunder flexing like a show-off—Wheels guided the last riders to shelter and parked the tram under a marquee of rain. A small boy, all elbows and worry, said, “Will you still come back at Christmas? I might still need you then.” Wheels crouched to eye level. “I come back every day someone needs me,” he said. “Christmas is an address; we deliver to feelings.”

He first wore the suit thirty years ago, in a hospital ward where the decorations blinked like they were trying not to cry. He discovered that red plus attention equals courage. Since then he has visited care homes, airports, flight lines, food pantries, ferry docks, and once—briefly and gloriously—a DMV queue. He takes payment in peppermint smiles and the occasional coffee pushed into his glove by someone who doesn’t know how else to say thanks.

December arrived eventually, as it always does even when we doubt it will. Wheels returned to the airfield with the same tram, now wrapped in fairy lights that turned the night into a benevolent constellation. He ferried families across the dark, a small moving hearth. The boy from July—pink again, braver by months—climbed aboard, pressed a letter into Wheels’s mitten, and whispered, “Just in case.” Wheels tucked it into the inside pocket where he keeps emergency joy.

People ask where he finds the energy. He shrugs. “I outsource propulsion to wonder,” he says. “Also: carbs.”

He doesn’t believe in off-season. To him, Santa is less a date than a job description: person who notices and returns. On New Year’s Day he takes the suit to the dry cleaner, labels the ticket priority, and goes for a drive with no destination, waving at dogs like old colleagues.

Wheels is proof that some engines run on gratitude. He is also proof that laughter is a vehicle. Both get us where we’re going, which is always the same place: toward one another.