Skip to main content

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 Santa. Turns out, parents take great pains to preserve children’s belief in Santa.



In the US there is a hotline where children can call the North Pole and kids can talk to Santa to tell him what they want for Christmas. Finland took this a step farther and made it into a TV broadcast, set in a toy workshop complete with elves working in the background while Santa takes calls.



And while in the US we say that Santa comes in the middle of the night, conveniently when everyone is sleeping, in Finland he comes during the day on the 24th. This means that someone needs to dress up as Santa to deliver children their presents and make an actual visit to the house. For younger children, a father or uncle can sneak out to run an “errand” and come back dressed as Santa and then return as themselves without their children being any wiser.



For slightly older ones, however, parents actually hire people to come to their homes at appointed times. Someone I know who is a Scout (like boy scouts and girl scouts in the US) is in charge of scheduling the scouts in his group to visit homes and deliver children their presents. On the 24th, they will don their red suits and white beards and give children the gifts that their parents bought for them.  



Tonttuja (Christmas elves) by the dozen
Others are scheduled in less official a capacity. In my boyfriend’s building, we saw a handwritten ad for someone hiring himself out in case anyone in the building needed to order a visit from Santa. It’s an adorable sign for an even more adorable idea.



So I don’t know where Santa lives but I do know that this December 24th there will be hundreds of men, old and young, dressed like him visiting children across Finland. They will hop into their cars to go from one house to another, spreading a little bit of joy door to door.



Have a happy holiday!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Swinging into School

Well, kind of. We had orientation three days this week and had a chance to meet our fellow LLEES classmates. The program is truly international with students from Taiwan, Germany, China, Korea, Greece, Basque, Bangladesh, Iran and Mexico. There are only twelve of us right now but there are two students from Ghana and one from Nigeria who haven’t been able to make it due to visa issues. Besides being international, the areas of interest vary a great deal so it will be fascinating learning about everyone’s thesis topics and professional experiences. The inside of the cathedral Life on campus has changed dramatically. When I first got to Turku, you would see a few tourists hanging around the cathedral, which is on the edge of the University of Turku and Åbo Academy campuses (there are three universities in Turku, the third is Turku School of Applied Sciences). Now the area has throngs of students walking to and from the city center to the universities. Coming from a unive...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reflections On Becoming A Teacher

This is something I wrote just trying to think about some of the things we have been learning and thinking about. My classes this semester are much more interesting and leave me feeling like connections are coming at me left right and center but the only way for me to process these connections is to write. So here is the first of (hopefully) many where I synthesize the ideas that are going through my head. I invite you to think with me and grow with me by commenting below (I do see your comments! I may even reply :) ) I want to spend some time reflecting on what I have been learning lately. My classes have been converging towards the practical spaces, realities and pedagogies that go into creating a multicultural, anti-racist educational system. I am drawing on three readings in this reflection that came from the same course. All were about teacher education. Two were easy to contrast. One was called the pedagogy of difference and the other was called the pedagogy of fear. The fi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Change of Pace

A view of the Turku archipelago in the frigid weather. PC: Sami All of my time in the past month has been spent with doing one of two things: preparing for next year and making sure I get done with this year. The flurry of activity has been a welcome change to the rather luxuriously slow pace that had been defining my days up until now but in the process, this blog has fallen by the wayside. So what are these many things that have been taking up my time?   1.      Ice skating This is by far not what has occupied most of my time, but I think it has been the most refreshing. Last year I went ice skating only once and, as thrilling as it was, never got around to going again. Plus, the weather last year was so mild that you had to take advantage of cold days when they came to get much time on the ice. This year has been much better and ice skating has been a great excuse to bring people together. It’s this year’s version of chai. Thanks to my mo...
Post a Comment
Read more