No-show Santa

In Finland Santa comes to people's homes on the evening of the 24th and brings presents. This year, we'd ordered a Santa from the Internet, thinking that the service must be very reliable since they even had a hotline you could call if any problems arose!

We waited for Santa to arrive at 4 pm and took the sack of presents outside. Soon we got a phonecall from the lady from the hotline, saying that Santa is a bit late and would arrive at 5.30 pm. Okay, we thought - no worries, we can entertain the kids till then! Soon 5.30 pm arrived.. but still no Santa. The kids were getting quite impatient.. My mother-in-law called the hotline and they asked if we'd like to cancel Santa!! Well, obviously we did not want to cancel and decided to wait another hour.

Soon four hours had passed and many phone calls later to and from the hotline and even from Santa himself, it was painfully obvious that we had been lied to (Santa will be there in 30 min, Santa is just in the neighbourhood..) and the lady from the hotline admitted that there would be no Santa Claus visiting us that evening!!

What to do? Thankfully, my mother-in-law had a Santa outfit at home from previosu years and my brother-in-law agreed to dress up. Our only worry was that our five year old would notice that it's him (this is why we'd opted for a stranger to play Santa), since he still very much believes in the magic of Christmas.

Finally the knock on the door came at nearer to nine pm and we rushed to the door. The minute Santa opened his mouth to wish Merry Christmas our son shouted my brother-in-law's name!! We were a bit shocked and wondering what to do next when he suddenly shouted "sorry, it was a misunderstanding!". From there on, Santa was very quiet and our son actually believed that it was the real Santa.

Christmas was saved after all and we learned a valuable lesson - never to trust Internet Santa services again!


Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!