/ 12 December 2004

Elves sort through millions of Santa letters

It is the busiest time of year in the Santa Claus’s Village post office in Finnish Lapland, as postal clerks dressed as elves handle more than 500 000 letters sent to Santa Claus this Christmas.

”Every day thousands and thousands of letters arrive here from around the world,” Heli Kairansuo says while looking at the letter piles on the sorting desk in front of her.

More than 10-million wishes and greetings have ended up at this post office, located just outside the Lapland capital, Rovaniemi, since it opened 20 years ago.

A few years back the branch was flooded every year with about 800 000 letters, but the figure has since dropped to about half a million as more and more people opt to send e-mails to Santa instead, Kairansuo said.

Last year, nearly a fifth of the letters were mailed from Poland, 68 000 came from Italy and 34 000 from Japan. Finland, France and Germany accounted for about 17 000 letters each.

”As long as it says Santa Claus and Lapland or North Pole on the envelope, it will arrive here. The correct address, meanwhile, is: Santa Claus, 96930 Arctic Circle, Finland,” post master Taina Ollila says.

The torrent of letters to this frozen outpost began about 80 years ago when a popular Finnish children’s radio programme claimed that Father Christmas lived in a mountain nearby, prompting Finland’s postal service to open a special Santa branch.

”Often the letters are just some wish list or a page torn out of toy catalogue asking for this or that. But Santa doesn’t like that; he wants people to write about themselves, their families, hobbies, dreams and hopes,” says deputy post master Riitta Mattila.

As long as they have a return address, all greetings receive a reply from Santa written in eight different languages.

Many letter writers ask questions about Father Christmas and Lapland, so in his reply Santa talks about his life, about the beauty of Lapland and about his hopes for love and peace to flourish around the world.

”Last summer, a French girl came here with her parents, holding the reply letter in her hand. It’s the most beautiful thanks to Santa that a family comes here and sees how life is at the Arctic Circle,” Ollila says.

Last year alone, more than half a million people came in person to visit this postal branch, built as a traditional Finnish log cabin with a working fire place and small-paned windows, making it Lapland’s largest tourist attraction.

Visitors can spend as long as they like talking with the postal elves and writing and sending Christmas greetings from here with special ”Santa Claus’ Main Post Office, Arctic Circle” stamps, Ollila said.

For some people a quick visit is not enough, however. Retired travel executive Tartu Peltonen, who lives outside Helsinki, has for instance volunteered as a postal elf for two weeks.

”I believe that Santa Claus exists, and I always dreamed about working in this post office,” she says.

”People are more than welcome to work here as volunteers, but they must have a good sense of humour,” Ollila says.

The job is not all fun and games. About a third of the letters that arrive concern serious matters, such as family problems or tragedies around the world — such as the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001 or the Balkan crisis.

”Many of these letters are signed with a first name or an initial … When there is a return address, we answer them as best as we can with individual replies,” Ollila says.

”It’s very touching when children write about their wish for love in their families, because the family situation is not so good, or their parents are separating. After all that’s what Christmas is all about, love,” she concludes. — Sapa-AFP