Readers in Council,
The Japan Times,
5-4, Shibaura 4-chome,
Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023
The November 29, 2014 front page photograph “Finnish your dessert” featuring an “officially registered” Finnish Santa Claus distributing chocolates to youngsters at Narita Airport is misleading. It is misleading every year when a similar Finland promotional event occurs and a similar photograph is published. Japenese children and their parents are being misled by fraud, because Santa is not from Finland, he is from the North Pole, Canada. I know because on Wednesday, December 3 I got four letters from him in response to postal letters I mailed on behalf of some Japanese children, and the North Pole, Canada is the return address on the envelope. Take a survey of foreigners on the street and ask them where Santa lives, not where he is from. The answer to the former constitutes most of the answer to the latter. Admittedly, Western Christmas traditions are a quilt of borrowed and invented elements from myriad sources, so a comprehensive answer to the matter of where Santa is ‘from’ requires a flexible approach. Finland’s greatest contribution is the reindeer, I suppose, not the heavy-set man in red himself. But there is no doubt that he lives at the North Pole.