Christmas with Santa Claus

My 2001 Christmas holiday highlight was a 2 days 3 nights trip to Rovaniemi – the largest town in the northern part of Finland. I left Helsinki by night train on the 30th Dec 2001, and arrived in Rovaniemi the next morning. Rovaniemi was much colder than Helsinki, and it was –31 C when I arrived in the city center. It was so cold that my eyelashes were frozen with a thin layer of ice as I walked on the main street for only few minutes! Rovaniemi is a popular place for skiing, and it also has a few tourist attractions that featured the famous Santa Claus. Although everyone knows that Santa Claus is only a fictional figure (well, almost everyone), but Finland is trying hard to promote to the world that it is the original home of the Santa Claus. For that reason, they built a Santa Claus Village (or more accurately a mini tourist shopping center) and a Santa Claus Theme Park (built completely within a manmade cave) near Rovaniemi.

I visited the Santa Claus Village on the first day I arrived in Rovaniemi. It took about 15 minutes by bus to travel to the Santa Claus Village from Rovaniemi city center. The village is located just within the Arctic Circle border. Although the whole environment setting and buildings are quite beautiful, it actually has not much to see, except some tourist souvenir shops and cafeterias. With a sum of fee, you can take a picture with the real “Santa Claus” in his Santa workshop (basically a photo studio with interesting background setting). In overall I think the most creative thing in the Santa Claus Village is the “Santa Claus Post Office”. It is basically a Finland Post Office branch with special interior design. However, they have promoted the place (or engineered the post office system) so well that the “Santa Claus Post Office” has so far received over 6-7 million letters from kids all-round the world! So if you want to write to Santa Claus, you can actually address to “Santa Claus, Finland” or even just “Santa Claus”, and the letter will arrive to this post office and deliver to “Santa Claus”. I guess you may actually receive a reply from “Santa Claus”! In the post office, you can fill up a form and request “Santa Claus” to send a letter to someone for the next Christmas (cost 35 FM or RM17 per letter). Otherwise the Santa Claus post office can keep your Christmas letters or gifts in their storeroom and send them for you during the next Christmas! What a creative service! I think whoever came up with this Santa Claus idea really deserve a big award from the Finland Tourism Promotion Board! Imagine how many tourists they have attracted to Finland simply because of this single idea!

On the 31st Dec 2001, I joined a local tour to participate in a “New Year Outdoor Celebration” in the millennium village. At around 10:00pm, a couch picked me up from the motel and drove me to the “millennium village” located in an open space. It was an area that surrounded with tents, campfire, ice built lanterns and a snow-built center stage. I think there were probably close to 1 to 2 hundred people gathering there. Half an hour before the midnight, there was a live stage performance, including dancing, music, elves, show queen, legendary figures and other special performers. The show peaked to the countdown of the New Year under the leadership of Santa Claus; everyone was given a glass of wine, and enjoyed the impressive fireworks. Overall it was an unforgettable experience. On the other hand it was also quite a torture to spend close to two and half hours in the open space under such an extreme weather. I think it must be at least –30 on that night!

On the New Year day, I joined a reindeer safari organized by a local tour. The tour operator picked me up from our motel and dropped me in a small lakeside village located 15 km from Rovaniemi. From there I started our 30-40 minutes reindeer safari by sitting in the sledge pulled by a strong reindeer. The short safari led me through a silent and snowy forest. After the safari, I was served with coffee and sandwich around the open fire in the Lappish tent. I also met some people who joined the snowmobile safari, which they ride the snow motorbike on a frozen river.

Overall the 2 days 3 nights trip to Rovaniemi was quite interesting. Unfortunately most pictures taken during that few days did not come out well, because the camera lenses was either frozen or covered by a layer of moist…

Oct 04, 2006