Santa 'Snoozes' With Sleeping Baby for Best Photo

— -- It was not a problem that 5-week-old Scarlett Genna cannot talk and thus could not tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas when she sat on his lap.

The newborn from Abingdon, Maryland, was asleep the whole time anyways, and a photo of the moment suggests that Santa was snoozing too.

The result is an adorable photo that shows a sound asleep Scarlett nestled on the jolly round belly of a Santa Claus with his feet kicked up and his eyes closed.

The photo was taken at the Harford Mall in Bel Air, Maryland, last Saturday after Scarlett and her parents, James and Jennifer Genna, and grandparents, David and Deanna Sawyer, stopped by the mall on their way to a Christmas sweater party.

“Santa was on a break until 6 p.m. when we got there, so during the break I fed her and changed her and by the time we got in line she was just passed out,” Genna told ABC News.

“The Santa took a regular pic with her and then said, ‘I could just take a nap with her,’ and kicked his feet back and we got that picture,” she said.

Genna posted the photo on the mall’s Facebook page and it quickly went viral from there.

When Genna and her daughter went back to the mall Wednesday to deliver a thank you gift to the Santa Claus for being such a good sport, it was clear just how popular the photo had become.

“He said he found out about it from his daughter who lives in Arizona,” Genna said of the Santa Claus. “She called him and said, ‘Dad, is that you?’

Scarlett, who was born on Halloween, is as good of a sleeper as the photo portrays, according to her mom.

“She’s such a good baby,” Genna said. “She stayed asleep the whole time we were taking pictures. We could lift her arm up and it would fall back down.”

“She looked so comfortable sitting on him I felt bad moving her,” she said.

Genna says she has been working on a series of children’s books and this new photo of her daughter has inspired a Christmas story she is now writing.

“It’s great that it’s been a happy story to share,” she said.

With all the attention, there is one more thing that Genna wants give her daughter credit for: her hair. Unlike Santa Claus, Scarlett is not wearing a hat.

“People have been commenting that she must be wearing a hat but it’s not a hat,” Genna said. “She has a head full of dark hair.”