Several European countries are competing to claim Santa as one of their citizens
Hyderabad: With Christmas round the corner, the most-awaited person, both children and grown-ups want to meet, is Santa Claus. The children wait the entire year planning what gift they want from Santa. However, sending a letter to Santa can be difficult as no one can agree on where exactly Santa lives. Several countries are competing to claim Santa as one of their citizens.
Finland’s tourism industry suggests Korvatunturi in Lapland is where Santa keeps his workshop, and the link between Santa and Lapland brings in hundreds of millions of tourist dollars.
Danes say Santa is in Greenland.
Sweden suggests Mora is the place, and has built the theme park Santaworld. These places certainly look the part with white snow in winter and reindeer. They’re also close to the North Pole. By the 19th century, Santa Claus was settled in popular awareness more or less what we think of now: a jolly old man with a beard, a sleigh, reindeer and presents, living somewhere northern and cold.
But standardizing Santa’s appearance did not settle where he lived and worked. In the mid-19th century, the illustrator Thomas Nast portrayed Santa as a jolly old man in Harper’s Weekly, and the illustration and the archetype took off. But Nast just showed Santa in a wintry landscape. It could have been the North Pole, and no one in 1866 had been to the Pole. No explorer reached there until 1926, leaving Santa, if he did live there, undisturbed in his workshop.
The medieval and pagan mythologies in Finland and Scandinavia give some credibility to these countries’ efforts to claim Santa as their own. After all, these are old legends. Other countries take a more modern approach. The Canadian government makes sure Christmas happens each year by allowing Santa to travel through Canadian airspace.
Taking that a step further, in 2013 the Conservative government of Stephen Harper issued Santa and his wife with Canadian passports. That action might seem whimsical or simply some Christmas fun for children, but it may also have shown that some governments want to claim a lot more than Santa.
Harper’s gesture came at a time of an international political dispute about ownership of the North Pole and specifically Canadian claims to Artic regions. Santa Claus is a name derived from Sinterklaas or Saint Nicholas.
Along with pagan elves and gnomes, another element in the long and very complex history of Santa is the Christian bishop St Nicholas of Smyrna. Smyrna, now called Izmir in Turkiye. So, just as in northern Europe, different places in Anatolia compete to be associated with Santa.
A 2017 archaeological dig under the Church of Saint Nicholas in Turkiye was believed to have found the burial place of Saint Nicholas
