So you've been sending those letters to Santa Claus to the North Pole. Ho! Ho! Ho! Maybe that's why you didn't get what you wanted for Christmas.
According to the Finnish Tourist Board, Santa's official address is Arctic Circle, 96930 Rovaniemi, Finland, on the Arctic Circle in an upscale artisan center and entertainment park within sneezing distance of Rovaniemi, capital of Finnish Lapland. Remote as it is, it draws visitors from Asia and North and South America as well as from all over Europe.
Santa and his crew of 10 red-costumed elves tend to duties in a cozy suite of rooms adjacent to a busy post office where adults lined up to send Christmas mail in July. They wanted that Arctic Circle postmark.
Others were registering names and addresses of youngsters throughout the world, each of whom will receive a letter from Santa Claus in December.
Kati Manner, spokeswoman for the Arctic Circle complex, says the idea for the center was sparked by Eleanor Roosevelt's visit to Finland in 1952. When the peripatetic former first lady announced that she'd like to visit the Arctic Circle, the people of Rovaniemi worried about what they might show her. Their city had been leveled by retreating German troops during World War II.
"All that was on the Arctic Circle was ugly forest and marshland," Ms. Manner says, "But the owner donated the land and someone else donated timber for a cottage. Volunteers built the cottage within two weeks. The story is that the carpenters went out the back door as Mrs. Roosevelt was getting out of the limousine in front. The newspapers carried a lot of stories about Mrs. Roosevelt's visit to the Arctic Circle, so others started to come and more buildings went up."
When I visited the Arctic Circle in mid-summer, I saw far more adults than children in the shops that feature Lapland's finest crafts -- designer clothing made from reindeer hide or colorful fabric with natural dyes; hand-knit sweaters in colors inspired by the Arctic change of seasons, hunting knives with their new owner's names engraved on the blades, reindeer milk mugs carved from curly birch, dolls in Lapp costume, crystal art pieces, silver brooches and ceremonial spoons.
Even in Santa's quarters, adults outnumbered children. A giggling young Japanese woman posed for a picture on Santa's knee. A business-like German matron produced a list of names and addresses she thought the elf on duty should consider immediately. A British couple struggled to quiet a screaming infant who wanted nothing to do with that man with a silvery beard.
A carpenter was installing a new mailbox so Santa could pigeonhole requests by country. The busy season starts in October, Ms. Manner says. "The Finnish Labor Ministry employs 60 people to answer letters to Santa from October through January. We send out letters in Finnish, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Swedish and English.
"At Christmas time," she says, "this is a very busy place!"