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

Love Letter

One of my friends requested that I write a post about love. Now felt like a good a time as any for such a post. Admittedly, this post is extremely personal and I have more than a few misgivings about putting this out for the world to see. I wish that I could write about how I was in a wonderful relationship. My first somewhat real relationship was a whirlwind of emotions but it ended soon after it began. It’s end though allowed me to appreciate the other kinds of love that I am blessed to be surrounded by. These are the wonderful people around me who have come, in all forms and at all times, to lift me up during times of doubt, worry, pain or loneliness.   My class loves potlucks and recently we had another one. Since my kitchen has proved to be a good location for such gatherings in the past, I volunteered to host it again. The day of the potluck turned out to be a very emotionally low day for me. I spent much of it crying and then trying in vain ...
1 comment
Read more

Holding Sand

 My mother once gave me the sound advice to avoid holding tightly onto things (she was specifically talking about people at the time) because if you do, they have a habit of slipping away. She did this through a marvelous metaphor that went like this: If you have sand in your hand and make a fist, the sand begins to fall out and you are left with less sand than you started with. If you gently cup you hand and let the sand come in however, it remains in your hand, and you can perhaps even add more. This metaphor has stuck with me because it helped me with the problem that I was having back then. But I’ve come back to it again and again and slowly been realizing the smaller and more subtle ways that I grab onto things. These things are now always visible or tangible, but they still have important implications. Take meditation. I meditate every day. It’s like brushing my teeth, I simply can’t skip this part of my day. But unlike brushing my teeth, which is a methodical and easy ...
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