After 24 years of hosting the leader of the North Pole, Larry Jefferson-Gamble of Irving, Texas is now the Mall of America’s first black Santa Claus.

“This is a long time coming,” Landon Luther, co-owner of the Santa Experience, told the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. “We want Santa to be for everyone, period.”

Mr Luther kicked off a nationwide search for a diverse St. Nicholas last Spring so that children of color can identify with the jovial man in red. He met Jefferson-Gamble at a Santa Convention in Branson, Missouri where he signed the actor to a four-day contract in Minnesota.

“It was like finding a needle in a haystack,” he told the newspaper. Still, Mr Jefferson-Gamble said that the kids he meets rarely notice his race.