Santa Lands His Sleigh At The Oregon Historical Society Sunday, December 21; Free Admission All Day (Photo) - 12/17/25
Portland, OR — December 17, 2025 — Santa Claus is coming to the Oregon Historical Society this weekend! All are welcome to visit Santa from 1pm to 3pm on Sunday, December 21. Visitors of all ages are invited to take their own photos with St. Nick inside the popular Meier & Frank Santaland display, which is on view through December 31. Admission to OHS’s downtown Portland museum is free all day (12pm to 5pm).
Generations of Oregonians have fond memories of the downtown Portland Meier & Frank department store’s Santaland. A ride on the iconic monorail and a chance to sit on Santa’s lap became a Christmas tradition for many families.
Following the closure of Macy’s downtown store (which purchased Meier & Frank in 2005), a small number of items from Santaland were donated to OHS, which have been displayed annually since 2018. Come share in the holiday cheer with a visit to this nostalgic display, featuring Rudolph, animatronic elves, holiday decor, a model of the beloved monorail. The well-remembered Cinnamon Bear costume from Lipman’s holiday traditions will also be on display. Plus, a new “Easter egg” is added to the display each year; go behind-the-scenes in the making of OHS’s Santaland in this blog post and see if you can spot the new addition when you visit!
The museum galleries will be open from 12pm to 5pm. In addition to Santaland, featured exhibitions include:
- She Flies with Her Own Wings, a look at Oregon’s golden age of aviation in the 1930s that shares how flight reshaped lives and technology.
- June Drake: Preserving the Past to Shape the Future, a retrospective of photographer June D. Drake’s work documenting life in Silverton, Oregon, and surrounding areas and the evolution of rural Oregon over six decades.
- The Yasui Family: An American Story, which shares one Oregon family’s experiences of racism, incarceration, and their unwavering commitment to justice, reflecting broader civil rights struggles in America.
- “We Were All Living a Dream”, a photographic exhibition of Donna Pollach’s intimate portraits of feminist and lesbian communities in 1970s Portland, chronicling their activism, camaraderie, and challenges.
About the Oregon Historical Society
For more than 125 years, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving a vast collection of objects, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platforms, educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon’s history open and accessible to all. We exist because history is powerful, and because a history as deep and complex as Oregon’s cannot be contained within a single story or point of view.
