Merry Christmas from Santa Claus Village, Lapland

Travel feature for a magazine , Dec 2011.

(Click on photos to go to photos)

If you have spent the better part of your childhood singing hosannas in a church, Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi Lapland will only remind you of your own regimented boarding school days when you stood groggy-eyed in the pews early in the mornings. The Christmas carols play around the clock here from invisible speakers and as you hum along you realize how well they were drilled into you in school.

Therefore when I discover that my Finland itinerary includes a visit to Santa Claus Village I know it would be a throwback to school-day nostalgia. I am not too excited . Besides I feel a bit too overgrown to patronize a Christian legend.

But when I enter the Santa Clause Village I see more frolicking adults than children. I realize it is perfectly normal here for the grownups to behave like excited teenyboppers. Most of the adult exultations is in crossing the Arctic Circle that runs right across the Santa Claus Village. The Arctic Circle is not really an imaginary line here. It is marked on the ground and at night a lazer beam tells you exactly what side of the 66 latitude you are. There are also big lampposts erected at regular intervals to demarcate the line. Tourists head for this line and photograph themselves jumping in and out of it to mark their Arctic tryst.

Most of the tourists come to do just that and Finland tourism recognizes this and has lots of indulgences for them in the village. Souvenir shops abound in here and you can take home anything from reindeer skin to arctic brick a brac. There are also coffee-shops and bars. But the main attraction of the village is perhaps the Post Office.

Its called the Santa Claus Post office and is like no other post-office in the world. It is open on all days and during Christmas it has to hire extra hands to deal with all the mail which still come the old-fashioned way – ie cards and letters. It is no ordinary mail either. Its more of a snail- mail spam which comes in bag-loads in the name of just one man- the resident arctic dweller Santa. But Santa’s efficacious elves are there to take care of the letters for him. They sort all the letters by the country and the letters are stored for posterity. A pretty Finnish girl dressed up as an elve complete with her red tunic and skirt and a conical red hat, shows us a five meter long letter written by a small boy in Sweden. There were loads of letters from India too but its England that led in the most letters sent department.

The elves gently goad you to send a letter to your loved ones from the post office. Doing so your letter bears a special Santa Claus village stamp. I send one letter (for a small price of course) to my skeptical nephew to reinforce the Santa legend in him.

Santa Claus amusement park has indeed been set up for this express purpose. Parents come with children from all over the world to get a date with the `real’ Santa of the North Pole .

There is the Santa Claus office where you can register yourself to meet the gregarious old man. There are three Santa’s who take turns to sit in a wooden cabin meeting an endless array of visitors. Feeling somewhat out of place I stand in a long queue of children waiting my turn. The Santa Claus office is built like the inside of a giant clock with some moveable parts that are designed to creek and groan. This clock-house with its bearded timekeeper perhaps signifies the surreal time-space that exists North of this village where you have the phenomenon of the midnight sun (in summers) and no sun at all in winters.

When our turn comes a handsome boy dressed as an elf ushers us in. He also doubles up as Santa Claus’s official photographer as he quickly gets behind a cabin from where he photographs us exchanging greetings with Santa. The `Official Santa’ is very much the Santa of my imagination. Long white undulating beard. Rose tinted rotund cheeks. And the all too familiar corpulent frame. He greets us a predictable Namastay when told we are from India. He takes turns greeting us all and asks the girls in our group if they have been good-girls in a manner and tone he would ask any naughty children visiting him. The girls play along with one of them insisting on getting a photograph shot sitting on his lap.

No sooner you are out of the Santa Claus cabin you are handed a framed photograph of you with Santa- again for a small price.

Beside the thrill of meeting Santa, there are not too many amusements for the children apart from regaling themselves by sledging on the artificial snow-slopes at the village. However most of the merchandise at the shops from Christmas books to clothes is angled at the children. But if you are an adult and a boarding school product like me you cannot but ignore that tug of nostalgia for the church ceremonies back in your school in the mornings.