There had been an idea, many years ago, that we could include a quick stop at the Santa Claus headquarters of the world, which is in Finland. So I was dispatched to check it out.

Flying up from Helsinki on the very efficient Finnair, to the city of Rovaniemi, I had an aerial tour of about a million pine trees.  If you like pine trees, Finland is the place for you.   I am met and installed in a very efficient if somewhat spartan. Finnish hotel and told that the reindeer on the menu for dinner is REALLY good.  I am kind of thinking, I did not come here to eat them.

Next day, the very cheerful Inge is waiting for me and off we go to visit Santa.  Kind of odd, in blinding and actually quite warm daylight. I see lots of reindeer standing around.  And then I discovered the Santa industry is something that provides this place with a great income.  Their peak season runs for a whole month … Nov 25 to Dec 25 and then it is almost over.  But in that month, the place is on overdrive.  The airport is swamped with charter flights from all over Europe. At weekends, just thousands of visitors pour in.  The Brits lead the pack by a long way, but the Germans and French and Spanish are not far behind.   It is the long day out from hell, as no one stays the night, but flies from home in the early morning darkness, which can mean a 3 – 5 hours flight just to get there. They run around for a few hours doing the Santa thing and then fly back the same evening.  Some very quiet and tired passengers on the return trip for sure.

The Finns have it all totally under control.   Don’t forget, in the middle of December, it is dark all day up here.  The visitors leave home in the dark, it is dark when they arrive and it is still dark when they get home.   Regarded as totally safe, the immigration check is minimal so as not to slow things down.  Once off the aircraft, they are put in to polar expedition suits and jump on to sledges, pulled by reindeer. Lit with blazing torches, they take a dramatic ride thought the … yes … you guessed… fir trees.  They are all illuminated, heavy with snow and I saw the pix and very dramatic it looked. Lots of Christmas cards come to life.

Then they end up at a Santa’s workshop.   As it is all dark and very carefully plotted, they cannot see there are quite a lot of Santa’s workshops.  They are huge.  You jump off your sled, cheeks flushed and then enter a Disney-like world to make you feel you have arrived right at the North Pole.  I had to admit, in my best grumpy old man frame of mind, that they do it extremely well.  Of course, the whole things ends with a visit to Santa himself and I saw where it all happens. Being June, there was only one Santa on duty and he was elsewhere, but I could see how it worked.  It is of course a HUGE retail opportunity.  Even in June, Santa’s helpers were there, all in full winter rig, the scent of pines being wafted in and many international Christmas carols being played.  It was beyond surreal.

I talked to some of the women (it appeared to be totally female run) and asked them if they didn’t ever get a bit Christmassed-out?  I might as well have said I don’t believe in Santa Claus, as they were all total fans of Santa and this is a dream happiness job.    High on ho-ho-ho.

I discovered, thanks to the agreement of the international postal union, letters dropped in mail boxes anywhere in the world, addressed to Santa, North Pole do get delivered.  It is territorial, so Finland receives most of those from Europe. This means hundreds of thousands of letters, starting in October.  They are all opened and read, which is a huge undertaking, as of course not many are written in Finnish and come in many languages.  I asked if there was a country that sends most and of course they had all the stats.  Top three for writing to Santa are the UK, Poland and Japan … how about that!  Letters are checked for signs of distress from the child.  If the writer expresses severe problems, then the letters are returned to the child care agencies in the countries concerned.   It also means they have a stack of international stamps and you can buy large envelopes of them for small amounts and the money goes to UNICEF.

About 40 years before this expedition. I was a Santa Claus in a department store in the UK.  That is another story.  But it was great to come to the WHQ of the business. I had come home.