Mark Wallengren presses a button inside his studio at KOST-FM/103.5 while Santa Claus, who’s sitting on a stool in the corner, updates listeners on the countdown.
“We are five minutes from wall-to-wall Christmas music right up to the first of the year!” he says in that rich voice that KOST listeners have heard weekdays on the Los Angeles radio station’s airwaves for the past 34 years.
Santa gives the sleigh bells attached to his broad black belt a little jingle, and you probably don’t need to be told that his eyes are all a-twinkle.
This is the 18th year for KOST-FM’s annual all-Christmas playlist, a tradition that those who listen to the station largely adore. There are, however, a few Grinches who always gripe that it comes too early, that Christmas music isn’t proper ‘til after Thanksgiving.
But it’s clear inside the iHeartRadio building in Burbank on Friday afternoon, as well as at the IHeartRadio Theater where lucky listeners who win call-in contests got treated to a Gwen Stefani holiday show a few hours later, that the holidays, and holiday music can’t get here soon enough.
A little bit of jolly
Santa Claus arrived at the station a little after 4 p.m., escorted by a pair of elves from the station’s sales department, Christina Sarkissian and Tara Rossi.
“I’ve worked here from the first time we did this,” said Rossi after getting Santa to FaceTime her 13-year-old daughter Olivia. “I know it sounds cheesy, but every year I tear up and get emotional.”
After FaceTiming Sarkissian’s 9-year-old niece Lola — who, like Olivia, was told she had made Santa’s nice list — the jolly old elf talked a bit about the good cheer the season and its music deliver.
“We need a little bit of a break, it’s been a rough year,” Santa said. “A little bit of jolly, a little bit of nice go a long way.”
Santa is magic
Inside Wallengren’s studio, the afternoon host talked about his deep and abiding love for the Christmas holidays while December Brown, the remarkably well-named KOST-FM digital content producer got prepped for a bit with Santa.
Wallengren grew up in the resort-like setting of Park City, Utah, where white Christmases were always accompanied by the heavy footsteps of his great-uncles on the roof sounding the arrival of the Santa his grandfather brought in.
KOST listeners can write in with requests for Wallengren to call their kids in the role of Santa, and he says little makes him happier than the awe he hears in the young believers’ voices.
“Me being Santa, it’s just fun,” he says. “Santa Claus is magic.”
Christmas ornaments hang from ceiling tiles in the studio and the crane-like mic stands are wrapped in festive ribbons. An adult-sized nutcracker stands along one wall, a Christmas tree fills one corner.
Wallengren puts on a necklace made of ornaments that blink with colored lights. It’s almost 5 p.m. and time for Santa to press the button and launch the music.
A live event
“This is crazy,” Wallengren says. “Normally I’ll have something pre-recorded but I want to make it special. This is radio, baby, we’re doing it live.”
Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out Of Heaven” is winding down. It’s the last non-Christmas song KOST will play until the end of the year. Wallengren goes live, asking listeners about their year, whether they’d done kindnesses for strangers or vice versa.
He quotes Mother Teresa — “It’s not how much we give, but how love we put into giving” — and urges listeners to embrace the childlike wonder of Christmases past.
After asking everyone listening to hold their loved ones close and remember those like his brother and his nana who have died, Wallengren gets a little bit choked up, but then he calls for Santa.
“Where is he? Where’s Santa Claus?” Wallengren asks. “I have been waiting for you!”
An avalanche of ho-ho-hos announces his presence.
“Now remember, it’s not about me,” Santa tells listeners. “It’s about taking care of each other.”
“Let’s count it down!” Wallengren says.
“Let’s bring the jolly!” Santa cries.
They push the button, and Barry Manilow’s “Happy Holiday/White Christmas” — the same song that’s kicked off the marathon all 18 years now — blasts out of the in-studio monitors.
When it’s time for Gwen
Gwen Stefani has lent a hand to KOST’s holiday celebrations in recent years, so she gets the second shot of the season with “You Make It Feel Like Christmas,” her 2017 single that features her guy Blake Shelton.
Two hours later, around the corner at the iHeartRadio Theater, Stefani comes on stage to open a brief set with a live performance of that song.
Santa has made his way there from Wallengren’s studio and is standing next to a KOST holiday backdrop and a white-flocked tree for photos with listeners who won tickets by calling into the station over the last week.
Pat Nikkhoo of Hacienda Heights and her daughter-in-law Michelle Nikkhoo of Laguna Niguel posed with Santa and then stopped to talk about the concert — Pat won the tickets just that morning — and the holiday music switchover.
“It’s fantastic,” Pat Nikkhoo says of the start of Christmas music she’ll be listening to for the next few months. “It gets all of us in a happy holiday mood.”
Michelle Nikkhoo says she’ll have her Christmas tree up this weekend — the decorations are already organized and waiting — and both she and her mother-in-law say the holiday radio tunes are a welcome respite to the troubles of the world outside.
“You feel relaxed, happy,” Nikkhoo says. “You sort of put things in perspective.”
Stefani brought her band and six dancers with her fresh from her Las Vegas residency. She played five songs total, all but “The Sweet Escape” from the Christmas album.
KOST-FM morning show host Ellen K interviewed Stefani between songs, asking her about the Vegas residency (She loves it), her team on “The Voice” (totally going to beat Blake Shelton’s team this time), to what she’s going to get her three sons for Christmas this year (“They’re really spoiled, maybe they’ll get coal,” she joked.)
Her Christmas album was re-released this year, and Stefani told Ellen K it continues to give her joy to have made something that has become a holiday listening staple.
“It’s literally the greatest thing ever to have a Christmas record,” she said. “I’d always wanted to make (one). It was my fantasy to be Mariah Carey when I grew up. Like that could happen.”
But it sort of already had: Two hours earlier, after Stefani’s song had played on-air, Wallengren cued up Carey’s classic, “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
