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 24^th. 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 24^th, 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!