Santa Claus doesn't live at the North Poles. Careful empirical studies by nuclear ballistic missile submarines smashing through the sea ice have demonstrated this. But rather than abandon the myth wholesale, some slight adjustments sees him living on the Arctic Circle, about 10 km north-east of Rovaniemi (uphill, if anybody else is stupid enough to cycle).
Truthfully, I can't confirm he lives there because there's no way I could angle a 39 year old guy seeing Santa without being irredeemably creepy. But there were signs. There was his Post Office. And there are dozens of shops selling Christmas crap to crappy Christmas carols. In July. 2015 is forecast to be the coldest summer in 50 years, but that does not a Christmas make. (2014 was apparently the warmest summer in 100 years.)
Santa also has huskies. Beautiful, beautiful doggies, though a little too wolf-like, with steel in their marvellously blue eyes. I wonder whether all dogs were like this before their lives degenerated into the indolence of 15 year vacations. The huskies can demonstrate their abilities, even in summer, but they need visitors to justify this, and the 'worst summer in 50 years' meant too few, alas. One could only wander among their curious ten-sided cages and observe the wholly superfluous 'don't stick your fingers into the cages' signs.
But Santa's reindeer - they are the best. Literally. By personal decree, reindeer are now the best animal. Not the smartest, apparently. According to their Saami owner they're 'not really very smart', with a contemptuous expression that would been accompanied by 'they're thick as shit' had his English been better. But other measures maketh the beast. They lack the skittishness of deer or the compulsion to eat your clothes of goats, and the 'please don't kill me' feeling you get around larger animals. Their hooves are too big (natural snow shoes?), their legs are too skinny (apparently maintained at a lower temperature), their faces are lovably goofy, and even their antlers look friendly. They fall off every year and grow back (which makes you feel better about those antler souvenirs), and harden later in the year into something more suitable for the righteous violence beloved of males of all species, but in summer they're soft and furry, and touch-sensitive (which irritates them no end (tee-hee)). Santa chose well.
Being at his essence an air freight logistics system, it's logical Santa would take security seriously. The previous day I had heard the distinct tearing of low-bypass military turbofans, without ever sighting the source. Now, crossing Santa's parking lot, it returned, followed moments later by a lone Hornet rocketing past, shooting vertically up into the cerulean blue, doing a split-S and then immediately following it with a barrel roll. It was an F/A-18C of the 11th Fighter Squadron of the Finnish Air Force's Lapland Air Command, stationed a few kilometres away at Rovaniemi airport. For the next half-hour it burnt through an obscene sum of fuel with a full, if solitary, airshow. Nominally, the fighters are there due to large Russian forces on the Kola Peninsula.
This is bullshit. To me the message is clear -
'Don't Fuck with Santa.'
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