Monument Christmas tree seller to hand out gifts, food to Ukrainian refugees in Poland, Ukraine
Nov. 27—This Colorado Santa is making a special trip from Monument to Ukraine in December.
For the last two-dozen Novembers and Decembers, Max Hatfield has moseyed down the street to his Christmas tree lot off Lake Woodmoor Drive. Beginning the day after Thanksgiving, Hatfield will sell six species of trees in the lot that sprawls in front of Pikes Peak Brewing Co., including Colorado white fir, which draws about 100 devoted customers every year with its pyramidal shape and aromatic needles.
Altogether, about 800 trees will leave his lot and find homes around the Pikes Peak region, and in a relatively short amount of time. He typically sells out less than two weeks into December.
With his long, snowy white hair and full beard, red baseball cap and red jacket, he piques curiosity among the younger visitors to his lot.
"Kids will say, 'are you Santa?'" said Hatfield, 76. "I say I'm his brother. He got this great international gig and I just got the tree lot. For the little kids, it doesn't register. It's mostly the parents that laugh."
This year, Hatfield will use all the proceeds from the tree lot, as well as other donations to his nonprofit ministry Friendship International, for a trip to Poland and Ukraine. When he leaves Dec. 16, he'll tote along a big Santa sack a friend made for him with the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine's flag along with the Santa suit he's started using over the last three years, "since I turned white and put on a few," he says as he rubs his belly in the living room of his Monument home. Mostly he plays the jolly old elf at private events, such as parties for friends who want to entertain their grandkids.
But now he'll be taking on the iconic role in a much more humanitarian capacity, as he makes stops at several venues to hand out toys, gifts and food packages to Ukrainian refugees staying with families in Poland and others still living in Ukraine. Tax-deductible donations can be made to: Friendship International, P.O. Box 746, Monument, CO, 80132.
"We may help a few people who have fallen through the cracks of some bigger efforts that are going on," Hatfield said. "We want to help both Ukrainian and Polish families that have been so hospitable. We're going to be mostly trying to focus on children."
Hatfield started his nonprofit ministry with his wife, Karen Hatfield, in 1983 to do the humanitarian and faith work that united them in the first place, through a faith-based youth organization. They moved to Monument in 1994 and went on to have three children. Karen died almost two years ago from brain cancer. She was 63.
Throughout the '80s, the pair did faith-based work in the Communist world, helping underground churches that were under communism. That was followed by adoption work with Russian orphans when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Also beginning in the late '80s, the couple started working with young Kurdish women in Turkey to help them avoid being recruited by a terrorist organization.
"We avoid political issues," Max said. "We're not taking sides. We're helping in the Ukraine. If Russia had refugees in need, we'd help there, too."
Humanitarian work wasn't always his life's calling, though. He first trained as a women's hairstylist in Ventura, Calif., in the late '60s. And he still gives haircuts today, mostly maintenance trims to his male buddies. But it was during those years that his life completely changed.
"It was later in life I had an experience with Christ," Max said. "I was kind of living for myself. Finally, I visited a church and had some amazing encounter with what I believe was Christ."
The experience caused him to reexamine his priorities, and he soon said goodbye to the lucrative hairstyling industry and jetted off to Switzerland to attend a Bible and youth missionary school. That abrupt reroute has informed the past decades of his work.
"I've tried to follow the ways of Jesus," Max said. "But I never mix it with politics, which happens. I'm sad that that happens. It's not meant to be that way. But the ways of Jesus — he was kind and loving. It was a sacrificial love we don't see in the world. It's the only thing that will change the world, that kind of love for one another."
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