Day, a figure called Risu-Tuomas (Twig Thomas) roamed the towns of western Finland with a gang of disguised
youngsters in tow who would inquire if there were any bad children in the house and ask for something to drink.
The Christmas goat
also appeared on Christmas Eve, with a birch-bark mask, beard and horns so that it
resembled a real goat. Children accompanied the goat from house to house, dancing, cracking jokes and
enjoying hospitality. The inhabitants of the house
might also receive presents, but they were brought by
someone else who would often just throw then in through the barely open door.
In Häme province youths amused themselves on St. Stephen’s Day by going round the houses asking
whether Stephen was at home. The St. Stephen’s Day goat was dressed up in a fur worn inside out, wooden
horns, and had a bath whisk for a tail. In Karelia a
smuutta
or
ropakko
wandered around between Christmas and
Twelfth Night. It tried to avoid recognition by changing its voice and manner of speaking, but actually entering a
house protected in this disguise provided a good chance to patch up old quarrels. After Twelfth Night,
nuuttipukki
goats rambled through the villages of Häme and south-western Finland, taking the tap from the barrel if they
were denied the home-brewed beer they demanded.
According to legend, St. Nicholas served as a bishop in Myra in south-western Turkey in the 4th century, and
was respected in both in the Eastern and Western Churches. He was adopted as
the protector of especially
sailors, fishermen, merchants and people living on islands. In the Nordic countries he was among the most
important Catholic saints in the Middle Ages, in Finland after the 12th century. He then became a more popular
figure in Finland, being made protector of birds, Master of the North and a forest deity. However,
on a global
scale, St. Nicholas is more renowned as the precursor of Santa Claus, as the source of a long success story. In
paintings St. Nicholas was occasionally portrayed in a red cloak, and on St. Nicholas’ Day, the 6th of December,
he might appear in scenes as a figure sharing sweets with children. Dutch Protestants took St. Nicholas with
them to New Amsterdam (New York) and other parts of the United States, and during the 19th century he
gradually turned into Santa Claus, the patron saint of
Christmas markets and presents, a fairytale figure that
sped through the sky with his team of reindeer, climbing down chimneys at night to put Christmas presents into
children’s stockings. Old England’s Father Christmas, Protestant Germany’s Weihnachtsmann and Russia’s Ded
Moroz are all partly descended from St. Nicholas, and the Finnish Santa Claus is also a part of the same
brotherhood.
In eastern Lapland there is a mountain called Korvatunturi
– literally Ear Fell. The name suggests that the
mountain can hear whether the children are being well-behaved or not, and although Markus Rautio, a popular
narrator of children’s
radio programmes, maybe did not personally come up with the idea of Santa living in
Korvatunturi, he certainly reinforced this idea in the late 1920s. Another important factor in the spread of
Christmas traditions was the primary school system. By this time our Santa had already got married and lost his
horns, even though he might still go from house to house in a lamb’s fleece, and he had also recruited a gang of
elves to help him. These little creatures were akin to the elves that in Finnish folklore protected houses and other
buildings, and they were perfectly suited to observing children’s behaviour since their earlier mission had been to
promote good morals.
In his designs for a Coca-Cola Christmas campaign in the early 1930s, American Haddon Sundblom
established the red, squat figure of Santa Claus as a basic western cultural image. Sundblom’s
father was
originally Finnish, so Finland was at a very early stage linked to the commer311 cial side of the story too.
Nowadays Santas are generally dressed alike the world over in a red suit with white trim
– there have even been
attempts to create official or semiofficial norms for his appearance
– and Finland is no exception. There are even
professionally organised courses for Santas which train them to visit private houses and serve market forces. A
Santa that wears an awkward cardboard mask and the wrong colour of coat, who takes a glass or two to boost
his confidence, is normally disapproved of, but no matter how amateur he is, he follows the old Finnish
Christmas traditions more faithfully than his certified brothers.
Everyone agrees that the person who brings the Christmas presents must
live in a mysterious place
somewhere far in the North, but whether Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, in Canada, Norway, Sweden or
Rovaniemi in Finland is a question that puzzles children writing their Christmas letters
every year and keeps
Nordic bu
sinessmen busy. Finns are of course sure that Santa’s true home is in Korvatunturi and that the
authentic tourist Christmas Land can only be located in Lapland, and this belief is becoming more widespread in
other countries. The snow, the northern nature with its reindeers, and the northern lights all create an excellent
backdrop for the mystical figure that makes and delivers the presents, a figure that is at once strange and
familiar and in whom the fears and hopes of childhood meet.
