When I told four-year-old Hanna last weekend that we were going to Sweden to see the REAL Santa, she looked at me as if I was mad. ‘But I’ve already seen him, mum. Last year, remember? When Holly’s dad dressed up?’
I had to explain that Holly’s dad was just a pretence and that the real Santa who has a real white beard and a round tummy — rather than Sellotaped whiskers and a cushion stuck up his jumper — lives in a house in snowy Sweden. I explained that if you are lucky you can find him with his sleigh and his reindeer, his helpers and his sacks of presents in the Swedish countryside. And that we might take a plane north and visit him.
I woke her at 4am and off we sped to Gatwick for the Santa charter to Jamtland — which is some distance south of Lapland but which the brochure promised was a Winter Wonderland.
The 180-seat charter was half full. For much of the two-and-a-half-hour flight we flew over frozen lakes and miles of snowy fields until the pilot announced we were reaching the home of Santa: Ã-stersund. Our Swedish tour guide told us that the city’s lake was the size of Barbados and that a female cousin of Nessie lives in it, even making trips to the North Sea to make little Nessies with the Scottish monster halfway. It would have been a nice tale for the kids — except most were asleep.
We reached the city-centre Radisson SAS. A bit of a business-style hotel with a small, indoor heated pool which kept us busy most of the afternoon before trying out our skiwear down the high street which sported a big H&M and a McDonald’s.
It was 3.30pm, already pitch black, and it was starting to snow. Hanna pulled down her hood, took off a glove and gazed up at the sky, savouring the flakes falling onto her palm. I asked her to put her hood back on before catching a cold, but she refused. ‘I want to feel the snow in my hair, mum.’ This was her first experience of falling snow.
The next day we rose at 8.30am. It was still pitch black outside. Like astronauts in our moon suits we boarded the bus that was to take us to Santa. A representative from Travelscene ran us through the programme for the day. He said we would be taken to Jamtli park, a museum with Christmas market where you can go on horse sleigh rides and see traditional bread being made. We would be left there until 4pm.
‘What about Father Christmas?’ Hanna whispered in my ear. So I asked Angus of Travelscene. He pointed out a spot on the park map which we had all received from the company and said with a nod and a wink: ‘You might find him there.’
The pink paper stated that Santa would be open from 11.30am to 1.30pm. Keen not to hit rush hour, I led Hanna through the snow past the stallholders cooking huge salmon on open-air fires and selling fleece scarves and hand-carved wooden toys to the background of a choir singing carols. It was below zero.
The first wooden house we came to looked promising. There was a queue of people in the lobby and I could see a cosy warm fire and table and chairs. We waited and when we got to the front of the queue found — after a bit of hand-waving communication — that this was a tea shop.
We trudged up the path to the next wooden house. ‘I wonder if he lives here, Hanna?’ I said, trying to drum up the excitement.
I swung open the wooden door and saw a skinny bloke sporting an unauthentic white woolly beard and a red coat tied with string, standing in front of a fire in a dark, wooden room (frankly, Holly’s dad’s impression was far more convincing). Surely this was a comic impression, not what you pay £1 100 and fly 1 000 miles to see?
Hanna was cowering outside crying in her pink Barbie wellies. ‘She’s too scared,’ I told him, thinking he may not understand, being Swedish and all that.
‘Don’t worry, luv. I could ‘ear it. Some kids don’t wanna come in,’ came the reply in the thickest, broadest cockney accent this side of Bow bells.
I could feel myself descending into disappointment freefall. He confirmed he was the Santa on our maps. But Hanna perked up and came inside.
I could hear Santa making inane conversation. ‘So what do you fink of Sweden then? Wanna biscuit? Wanna see me office? This is me workroom.’
We stayed a gruesome five minutes before making our exits and leaving. Hanna, having had no expectations, was pleased to have seen the old man, though she asked: ‘Why was he wearing his dressing gown?’ and more to the point: ‘Where were the presents?’
Here are the facts. There was a room with a fire in it and a side room with a Christmas tree and some cookies. But there were no reindeer parked outside, no helpers, no sacks of presents, no music and not a single ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ Santa hadn’t bothered to grow a real beard for the occasion and looked like he’d been on the Atkins diet.
We spent more time at the Christmas market. We went on a sledge pulled by a horse and driven around the park by a Swede in a floor-length fur coat and a real beard. We ate a couple of hot dogs and watched bread being made before heading back to the warmth of the visitor centre which by this time was teeming with thousands of Swedish families (20 000 visit each December). Then out of the din of Swedish voices I heard an English one. ‘Only three more hours to go!’
A row of unhappy Brits from our coach, three adults and four children, were sitting on a windowsill, one of their party talking into a mobile. ‘I am disappointed. I had to tell my seven-year-old daughter that the Father Christmas they saw was one of the helpers,’ the mum said between calls to her travel agent to sort out a Lapland day trip to the REAL Father Christmas next week. ‘The children haven’t really complained but they don’t know what to expect,’ she said of her brood of four under-eights, although her eldest claimed: ‘He had a beard Sellotaped to his face.’
Back at the hotel, the cosy lobby bar was filling up fast with incredulous Santa seekers, many of whom had booked Jamtland instead of Lapland, having been told it would be nearer and warmer (most Britons in search of Santa head for resorts in the far north of Finland, Sweden or Norway). Even those who had come without kids were disappointed.
There was Paul from Watford who’d booked a trip to Santa as a surprise for his wife Karen. Having bought a trip on lastminute.com clearly labelled ‘Lapland’ — he showed me the printout — the first they knew they weren’t going to Lapland was when they heard the captain announce Jamtland on the plane.
And there was Steve from Essex who had bought the Santa trip for his wife’s birthday. ‘Santa’ indiscreetly revealed to them that he had been a Spurs coach for 17 years.
At the hotel we clambered on the bus for the night entertainment: an evening back at Jamtli for a traditional Swedish feast. The smorgasbord was held in a wood slatted house next to the Barbados lake. It was lit with candles and fairy lights and waitresses with plaits in their hair whizzed around in flared tapestry long skirts and puffy white blouses.
A long wooden table heaved with food — 12 types of herring, smoked hearts of reindeer, pig trotters and jellied veal as well as the familiar Swedish meatballs and potatoes. The adults tucked in; few kids ate much.
Suddenly Angus popped up to announce ‘Santa and his sleigh’ (though when I peeped out of the window the sleigh must have made a quick getaway because there was none to be seen). ‘I hope it’s not that Santa, the Cockney one with his beard falling off,’ said a small girl. ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ said Santa, coming up the stairs — putting a lot more into his performance than he had that afternoon. The staff had stacked up a pile of presents on a table which Cor Blimey Santa dished out to the mob of kids hungry for goodies.
‘He’s still got his dressing gown on,’ whispered Hanna, before running off to collect a cute furry elk present. When it came to the adults getting their presents, I heard one chap say to his friend: ‘I hope there’s something alcoholic in here.’ It was a tea towel.
On the bus home many of the children had wrapped their elk in teatowels for extra warmth. ‘Santa wasn’t fat enough,’ said one kid. ‘It’s the beginning of the season, love,’ explained her dad.
The final day made up for some of the Santa disappointment. We were bussed out to a snow-filled stadium, donned motorbike helmets and zoomed around on snowmobiles, the kids on trailers behind. Then it was on to a husky dog farm, where the owners put the reins on two dozen blue-eyed huskies which sped off across the landscape, the sun setting on the snowy horizon. It was 1pm.
Last stop was an elk farm. The coach slithered along the ice up a hill, where we met the elk farmer, ex-head of the local social services who now owns 10 elk, from whose poo he makes a fortune by, wait for it, making paper out of it.
Back at the hotel, local schoolchildren came to sing us carols over lunch and then it was back to the airport. However crap Santa was, you couldn’t deny that this had been an entertaining weekend. But for some of the party, however gorgeous midwinter Sweden is, Santa could have made a tad more effort.
I got talking to Christel Fleming from Hayling Island, near Portsmouth, who had come with her husband Alfred and grandson Jack. She described how Jack had written a letter to give to Father Christmas and how they had wrapped a couple of presents to slip Santa to give to Jack. But when they handed Santa the presents he thought they were for him. ‘Fanks mate, fanks very much,’ he said, before Christel and Alfred pointed out firmly that the presents were for the boy.
By this time Jack was asking why Father Christmas had thought his presents were for himself. ‘We had to say to our little grandson that we thought Father Christmas was a bit deaf and old.’
Later, on the flight, Alfred revealed that Jack has cancer of the bladder. Last year he was given three months to live. They thought last Christmas was going to be his last so they wanted to make this one really special by taking him to meet the real Santa.
‘Very disappointing,’ said Alfred, who had no plans to complain to Travelscene, indicating that when someone is ill in the family such fuss was the last thing on your mind.
I thanked the rep Angus for the trip and said how much we’d enjoyed the activities, but that Santa had been somewhat underwhelming (where were the reindeer, the helpers, the presents in his workshop etc?). He told me firmly that the organisers had tried to make this a truly ‘Swedish experience’ and that the presentation of Santa was in the traditional Swedish manner.
Which makes you wonder why they couldn’t have hired a more realistic Swedish Santa and a couple of local reindeer? Maybe Holly’s dad should go into business.
Factfile
Jeannette Hyde went to Jamtland with Travelscene (0870 777 4445/9686). The fully inclusive package costs £599 per adult and £399 per child (up to 12 years). – Guardian Unlimited Â