'Santa Claus' Dies At Kindergarten Party, Suffered Heart Attack

A Russian "Santa Claus" suffered cardiac arrest and died during a New Year’s party in a kindergarten in Siberia, local news outlets reported Tuesday.

The 67-year-old actor, named Valery Titonenko, playing Ded Moroz or Father Frost – the Russian version of Santa Claus – was seen laughing and enthusiastically running after kids at the party in a video footage of the event in Kemerovo, Siberia, before suddenly freezing and falling backward. Up till that point, the mood in the party was joyful, with four-year-olds dressed up in costumes of bunnies and snowflakes, dancing around a brightly decorated Christmas tree, which in Russia is called a New Year’s tree.

The children were initially nervous reciting poems in front of Father Frost. However, the man with the white beard and mustache, wearing an enormous hat and a warm red-colored coat, soon lightened up their spirits by chasing them around the room. Even when he “complained about pain in the chest” and collapsed on the floor, giggling children approached him, thinking it was part of his act and anticipating him to get up any moment.

When a woman at the party realized Titonenko was not acting, she approached him and tried to lift him from the floor.

“The man felt ill in the kindergarten, he was taken in an ambulance but died on the way to the hospital,” local news outlet Sibdepo cited an unnamed medical source as saying.

According to Russia's state-owned RT network, Titonenko worked as an actor at Kemerovo’s Music Theatre and annually performed as Father Frost at the kindergarten in the recent years due to his grandson being among those enrolled at the institution. It is not clear if his grandson was present at the party when the incident took place.

“In recent years his health was not ideal,” a spokesman at the Musical Theatre of Kuzbass said, Mirror Online reported. “He had been through complicated heart surgery, but still performed on the stage and had been working at full capacity, not sparing himself.”

Despite the fact that he had not been feeling well and was complaining of chest pains, he decided against the theater’s advice to skip the kindergarten event because he did not want to let the children down.

As per Soviet traditions, Father Frost hosts parties for children, alongside the fairy tale snow maiden Snegurochka. The children receive gifts from Father Frost on New Year’s Eve.

In Russia, New Year still remains the most popular winter holiday, as opposed to Christmas, which is celebrated on Jan. 7, by Orthodox Christians, and not Dec. 25, due to the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars.