SANTA'S LITTLE PACKAGES

 

Before Christmas in Harriniva | Before Christmas in Yllas
Christmas in Kakslauttanen | New Year in Kakslauttanen
 About ScanMeridian | Children only | Departure Board

 

In December 2004 David Wickers of The Sunday Times, along with his son Jonah,
 travelled with us to Finnish Lapland. This is what he had to say.
 
It has been calculated that on Xmas Eve Father Christmas would have to cover more than 100 million miles, travelling at 1000 miles per second, in order to be able to make all his promised deliveries. Now, either that means the Santa thing is a complete load of rubbish or it's a complete load of magic. Personally we favour the latter. And that's because we - me and son Jonah, age six - went to see him. The real one that is, at his home in Finnish Lapland, not some department store sales assistant cross dressing for a silly season. Here's how.

THE FLIGHT

We flew first to Helsinki, where the pilot had to go into a holding pattern because of air traffic congestion. Too many reindeers training for the big event, I explained to the boy. Then on to Kittila. 'Cor, look down there Dad,' he called out, nose pressed against the plane window. 'There's snow on top of the control towers'. It was 1.30 pm and already beginning to get dark. Or not beginning to get light. Although more famous as the summer land of the midnight sun, in winter Lapland is the land of the midday dark.

We boarded a coach, nice and snug, and drove into the black and white night.

THE HOTEL

The family-run Harriniva is a wilderness holiday centre on the edge of a national park. Originally built as a stopover for German adventurers on their way to the North Cape, it looked like a log cabin that had swallowed Alice's 'drink me' potion, the one that makes her enormous. It stands on the banks of the river Muoni, which we couldn't really see because it looked just like more snow. Sweden begins on the opposite side.

On the inside Harriniva looked like the innards of a sauna, all pine fresh and with more layers of insulation than a pass-the-parcel package. It was so cosy and comforting that I half thought I might spend the next couple of days without bothering to venture into the wickedly cold world beyond the sextuple glazing, where even breath from a whisper rises like a steam train.

We checked into our room and found a wardrobe full of clothes belonging to a giant and his big son. The monster outfits - outer thermal shell suits, moon boots, gloves and top mittens, tea cosy woolly tophats and Johnny English balaclava underhats - were for us, handpicked from the Harriniva stores according to the measurements that we had posted ahead. Our wooden room even had a mini sauna ('but what I thought was funny was that it didn't have a bath'). We had dinner ('better soup than in London Dad'), went to bed and sleep like well honeyed bears.


THE ACTION

Grown ups should really turn the whole 'visit to Santa' experience on its head and think not short break to see the bearded one, with a few snowy things on the side, but a package of soft adventures in the snow with Santa as a celebrity bonus.

We rode, swaddled beneath deer skins, on a sleigh pulled by a reindeer who I passed off as Rudolph, explaining how his nose only shines for night flights (little known Finnish Aviation Authority regulation). We mush-mushed a sled pulled by a team of huskies - Harriniva has its own husky farm - following tracks though an empty, silent, duvet world of snow, ice and a million and one conifers. I snowmobiled across frozen lakes following Jonah who was huddled together with the other children on a trailer sleigh and sliding down really fast and you get to feel really sick. 'We drank mulled rose hip tea around a fire inside a Sami teepee while a charismatic old Shaman dressed in furs told us a meaningful tale about a little Lapp and a reindeer (J: 'I liked the biscuits'). We were offered the chance of a swim in the ice hole but said no thanks, some other time perhaps.

After a dinner, of salmon pinned on board and roasted on an open fire, we layered up again in our suits stepped outside to meet a man.

THE MAN

Santa was the star turn. Jonah and I were bundled up in elkskins in a sled pulled by 'playmoblie' (snowmobile) and were driven to the heart of darkness. Ice sparkled in the pines like fireflies, snowy meadows radiated a ghostly blue light. Even buried deep beneath our layers of Ranolf Fiennes wear you have a sense of the wild, icy fangs of death licking across the valley floor, we looked for the Northern Lights, those magical wisps of fluorescent trails fanned by the solar wind, but cloud obscured the sky.

For the last half mile or so, the track through the forest was lined with 'lights with fires inside them' (flaming torches). We saw a lonely cabin, lights radiating from within like an advent calendar. Elves greeted us at the door and took us into Santa's home for a private audience. The interior was like a glowing womb of good tidings, a scene so exceedingly perfect, a pair of elves busy wrapping presents to the side while the man himself sat in a big throne of a chair.

I was half dreading the encounter, imagining all sorts of naff jollity, with giveaway glimpses of hush puppies and M&S ankle socks peeking from the bottom of the red robes. But here was a real pro with homespun fireside words on the spirit of Christmas instead of the usual "ho ho ho, been a good boy" patter. I was impressed and so was the boy who, for a rare moment in his waking life, was reduced to silent gawping. When he shook his hands I thought he was about to teeter over backwards like a Coldstream Guard during a Trooping the Colour heatwave. Afterwards all he could recall was 'He was very old, about 69. His house was nice and warm and his bed was very long.'

Santa also turned up after supper on the last night. He pulled up in his reindeer sleigh and all the children charged across the dinning room. Had we been a ship we would have instantly capsized. He staggered in with the help of a cane, sat encircled by kids and opened his sack giving each child exactly what they had written to ask for. Now there's magic for you.

If you don't want to spoil things, shut your eyes now. I brought the present in a suitcase, hidden in a black bin liner, and sneaked it to the tour operator's rep on arrival. And Santa? He is a local special needs teacher who does it all for fun.

SANTA'S LITTLE PACKAGES: A TRAVEL BRIEF

Although it has cornered the market in Santa short breaks, Finland has not quite reached the state of a New York department store that advertised "six Santas. No Waiting." But with several UK operators flying around 40,000 people from around twenty UK airports the impact is handled light.

There are lots of packages to choose from but the Santa business is a classic in the 'you get what you pay for' school of economics. Be sure to check exactly what's included in the price; those that seem expensive might well work out cheaper in the longer run once you cost in the price of meals, winter wonderland activities, thermal clothing etc. The only way to economise is on a day trip but because of the travelling time you may find you are unlikely to venture beyond the boundaries of Rovaniemi, the main Santa hub on the Arctic Circle and home to both Santa's Village and a Santa theme park complete with deli-style tickets for Santa audiences.

Despite some of the brochure photographs, showing Santa basking in sunshine, Lapland in winter is gloomy, the sky never really blossoming into proper daylight and the lifeless orb of the sun barely managing to rise above the horizon. And it will be bone cold, dipping to minus 20 degrees or even further- not a 20 degree Fahrenheit nip-in-the-air, but 20, bone chilling degrees below centigrade. Who'd be a Finn? Who'd be Santa? And who'd be a child if you happen to hit a seriously cold snap that can reduce them to tears of numbed misery rather than beaming smiles of excitement (take plenty of warm clothes for your arrival and departure, i.e. before and after you get swaddled in your thermal gear).

But one good point: whatever the weather, Lapland airports rarely close.
 
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