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Showing posts from December, 2017

The Santas are Coming

A friend of mine said that while he was in Japan, he was asked to dress up as Santa for the kids at the school he taught at. Someone asked him where “he” (meaning Santa) was from and he said, being an American, the North Pole. A teacher immediately corrected him and said, “Santa is from Finland!” Finland certainly takes this impression very seriously. The biggest attraction in Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland is Santa Claus’s Village, which I journeyed to last December. It was rather awkward visiting Santa with no kids in tow and I didn’t really know what to say to him but we could not go all the way to the Santa Claus Village and not see Santa. (More fun than seeing Santa himself was witnessing the marriage proposal that happened in front of him between the couple in front of us in line.) A sign advertising to hire a Santa Claus I thought that Santa’s Village was the extent of Finland cultivating the imagination of five year olds who earnestly believe in San