By Minu Jain, IANS
Rovaniemi (Finland) : It’s Christmas and the letters are pouring in at the Santa Claus village in the Arctic Circle – from Washington, Warsaw, Wellington and, yes, Warangal too.
Of the 11.8 million letters that elves at the post office in the village have processed there are many from India. They are from children and adults, some simply wanting to get in touch with the Santa Claus of the countless stories and others hoping for a healing hand from the bearded man who has over the years come to symbolise hope and good cheer.
And just like Christmas has become a truly secular celebration, so has the Santa myth. G. Umamaheshwar from Mahboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh, who is an MSc in psychology from SU University in Tirupati, is a case in point. He has written a detailed letter to Santa Claus, not asking for Christmas gifts or a visit down the chimney but just succour.
Umamaheshwar, who wants to be a “great psychologist” in the US, informs that he has “converted into Jesus” from Hinduism and that his father is a drunkard.
“For past seven months, father is in unhealthy condition. Pray for him. I think he has no mental stability. Pray for me and my family,” he writes in a heartfelt appeal.
The cry for help reaches out from across the vast distance separating Mahboobnagar in India’s south to the snow draped Santa village where Santa Claus resides.
There are other letters too, more predictable than Umamaheshwar’s treatise of a troubled life. Six-year-old Prateek writes in from Warangal: “I love you very much. I feel you in dream. I like chocolates and toys. I love you so much.”
There are also affectionate missives from Chittorgarh, Mumbai and Bangalore. All painstakingly opened by the staff at the post office – elves in Santaspeak – dressed in cheerful red and with caps bobbing here and there as they efficiently sort out the mail.
Each letter, written simply to “Santa Claus, Arctic Circle, Finland”, gets to this post office, a stone’s throw from Santa’s lair, and also gets an answer from Fred Claus.
This Christmas, the post office has received upwards of 750,000 letters. In peak season, this can go up to 33,000 letters a day though the traffic is kept up through the year.
Santa Claus’ Main Post Office, housed in an impressive structure of natural stone eight kilometres from the town of Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, has a postmark of its own. Every card, letter and parcel sent from here is cancelled with the postmark.
The man himself, with his flowing white beard, horn rimmed glasses and the oh so familiar deep voice, says that all the letters are close to his heart.
The favourite demands continue to be dolls for little girls and cars for boys, he says, but then children all over the world write to him about other things too – a new baby in the family, how school is going and how a tooth was lost.
“My deepest Christmas wish is to give something for those in need of the Christmas spirit,” he says in his office with elves scurrying around busily and a time machine slowly circling overhead.
The Finnish Santa in his picturesque village, where you can actually cross the Arctic Line, could be fact or fiction, a marketing gimmick or one more way to perpetuate a happy fantasy. Either way, this familiar figure in Lapland continues to offer hope.
And there can really be nothing wrong in that.