On Christmas Eve in Finland, the entire family puts on their coats and heads to the cemetery to pay respects to the dead with candles and singing, a tribute that doubles as both touching Christmas miracle and traumatizing nightmare for Finnish children. It's telling to think that a child's only wish on Christmas Eve might well be to "not get lost in the graveyard at night like last year."

Adding more fuel to the Santa Claus geography debate, the Finnish have their Santa (Joulupukki) living in the northern part of Finland, to the frustration of Greenland purists. According to the online fact site Virtual Finland (a boon for those of us who'd prefer to think of Finland in a non-physical, implied sense), Father Christmas "uses whatever means of transportation is best suited to the weather conditions." He has a sleigh drawn by team of reindeer, natch, but also a team of dogs, a car, an airplane, a snowmobile, and even a helicopter. It sucks a bit of the magic out of Christmas to envision Santa living twenty miles up north, tooling around the woods on a snowmobile.

Plus, without the magical aspect to the toy distribution, cracks appear in the myth pretty quickly: How does he keep the snowmobile topped up with gas? Why the need for an airplane and a helicopter, and how is he landing either of them in the backyards of Finnish children? What does "whatever means of transportation is best suited" imply? Does Father Christmas have access to, say, a submarine if the need arises? Who's funding this?