Exclusive: Behind the scenes at Smith & Caughey's Christmas wonderland

’Twas the month before Christmas when photographer Jason Oxenham got an all-access pass to the making of the Smith & Caughey’s Santa rooms. Story by Kim Knight.

At the Jo Malone counter, the limited edition Orange Bitters cologne had already sold out.

The Royal Doulton reindeer were on sale for $27.90 and, on the sixth floor, silver glitter was falling from the sky.

"Occupational hazard," said an elf, wiping the sparkle from under his eye.

It was 22 degrees Celsius outside, but the lift had slid open on winter. More white than a Scandi-style Pinterest account. Snowflakes, icicles, and several thousand fairy lights. Santa Claus was coming to Smith & Caughey's.

It is an Auckland tradition. Follow the reindeer hoof prints past the handbags and lipsticks. Sit on Santa's knee and whisper your heart's desire. Fifteen dollars gets you a photo and an annual collectable bauble. (Time is money! $30 and you can skip the queue.)

Last year, 16,000 children visited the North Pole's Queen St outpost. What did they want?

"Pets," Santa tells Canvas. "But Santa doesn't do pets, he just does toys. It's bad enough being behind the reindeer.

Judge your audience carefully.

"Kiddies come up and say 'can I have an Xbox for Christmas?' And you look at them, and you look at Mum and Dad ... and you think, 'these people won't be getting a lot for Christmas'. So you say 'well, look, if I can't get an Xbox, I'll find something very special for you'."

Sometimes, says Santa, he'll grab a cardboard box from under the tree and draw a cross on it. "That's really effective."

Ho, ho, ho! But, also, he hears this: "Can you bring my mummy home?"

It's not easy being the Smith and Caughey's Santa. In human terms, the workload is equivalent to 15 men working rotating four-hour shifts in five identical rooms. It all begins months earlier on Trade Me, when staff begin scouring the auction sight for the furnishings that give Santa's home its "vintage chic" aesthetic.

Cheer up, it's Christmas!

This season's aesthetic: Vintage chic.

This year, wooden sleds were sourced from Auckland, Cambridge and Kaiapoi. The books on his shelves - The Prancer Diaries, A Style Guide for the Modern Elf and (highly recommended) Vixen, Comet and Cupid: A Collection of Candid Interviews - are not available at your local library, but the View-Master is preloaded with Snoopy's Christmas. Santa's milk is red-topped, and based on the wall display, when he circumnavigates the globe on a single night, he collects teaspoons. (Joy to the world, the souvenir reigns!)

But it's still 20 days before the man in red pants takes residence. Workers are still stapling the printed vinyl skin that turns summer into winter over the arched windows of the store's top floor. A Smith & Caughey's staffer stayed up until 3am finishing the hand-embroidered reindeer portraits that match the specially printed cross-stitch patterned reindeer wallpaper. Bubble-wrapped boxes contain miniature animations of Santa's workshop, shipped from Australia, from the same company that creates the enormous ground-floor animated windows displays.

Total cost?

"The windows alone are about $150,000," says Andrew Caughey, managing director. "Santa's enchanted forest is more about the time it takes to get it set up. The display team are busy for about two months."

Santa's little helper.

All was (mostly) calm, all was bright.

Twenty days before Santa arrives and this is just a dark room full of Christmas trees past. Once these rooms housed the Auckland branch of the Lyceum Club, where "educated and energetic" women with an interest in the arts, sciences, social services met for luncheon. From 1922 to 2000, their domain included a library, auditorium, dining, meeting and card rooms. Now it's just faux fir, dragged from the basement. The magic is still in the box, but slowly and inevitably, Christmas is coming.

Caughey is the great-grandson of this store's founder. A fourth-generation shopkeeper with his own son coming up behind him. Santa didn't used to stop at Smith & Caughey's.

"I spent 18 months in the UK as a young man. I worked at a couple of department stores and was exposed to the big stores - Selfridges and Harrods, and what they did for Christmas. I always had this vision that I wanted to take Christmas to a new level ... "

There is a romanticism, he agrees, about the department store Christmas.

Santa's store room.

This way to the North Pole (via Queen St).

"We can do this because of our scale. The flagship department stores that are on high streets, like we are, are very connected with the community.

"We have a very wide base of customers, from very young people to very old people. There's an emotional connection and an inter-generational connection, and, at Christmastime, that seems to come home."

Auckland, says Caughey, is changing. "It's a very multicultural city now, particularly in the CBD. But it's interesting that the new New Zealanders seem to quite enjoy this. They may not have any beliefs around the Christmas tradition, but they enjoy it because of the unique atmosphere."