A light bed of snow covers the loneliness here like a thick and comfy blanket in the uniquely charming town of Rovaniemi -- a tiny settlement in Inari, a region in Finland's far-north Lapland. A quick pan-and-scan of the scene reveals a small scattering of houses, a hotel, a tourist information booth and a gas station. There's not much else but a float plane used by tourists to sightsee over Lapland's largest lake. But today, in the dark of winter, it remains at anchor -- chained to the quay. The small gas station looks like a postcard straight out of the '50s.

In the summertime, the place is a transit hub for hikers on their way to Lemmenjoki, Finland's biggest and northernmost national park. During the Ruskaa or Indian summer here, the leaves turn such brilliant colors that even New England's fabulously beautiful forests have a difficult time competing. But winter is the most important season in Inari -- and it's a long one, with snow blanketing the ground through April. And during winter, Inari is the region of Finnish fairy tales with Northern Lights shining overhead night after night and polar foxes prancing about, their silver tails shimmering across the snow.

A man in a red and white suit, some reindeer and a mountain

But the biggest fairy tale here comes to life once every year for the Christmas season. Lapland, and particularly the small town of Rovaniemi, is best known these days as home to Santa Claus. And it's big business. Tourists have been flocking here in droves since the 1980s and Japanese sightseers arrive by the busload. They are bolstered by package tourists from all over the world who come to check out Santa's digs, collect elf sightings and, of course, visit the town's main attraction, the Santa theme park. Americans too are beginning to discover the home of Christmas in one of the world's most sparsely populated regions.

"Ever since the so-called Santa Claus in Alaska got outed as an unemployed man who was just trying to earn an extra buck, more and more Americans are coming here again," says Eva-Marie Hiltunen, who's been a local tourism operator here for 20 years.

Santa isn't a recent immigrant to the region. He's been here, according to popular legend, at least since 1927. It was in that year that an imaginative local radio host named "Uncle Markus" began telling the story of how Santa Claus and his elves were working day and night on nearby Mt. Korvatunturi to ensure that Christmas magic, and all the presents that come along with it, spread across the globe. The legend got a big boost in 1972 when the forward-looking members of the Finnish parliament requisitioned Santa for the country, declaring Lapland the home of the world's most famous elf.

But it wasn't until the 1980s -- and the publication of Marui Kunna's illustrated children's book Where Santa Lives -- that the legend and the resulting Santa-associated tourism really took off. The boom hasn't been uncontested. Canada, Greenland, Sweden and Norway all lay claim to being the place where the roly poly St. Nick parks his sleigh and keeps Rudolph and Co. hitched to the post. Even the German city of Himmelpforten ("Heaven's Gates") -- which, located just outside of Hamburg, is nowhere near the North Pole -- has, somewhat incongruously, joined the fray.

Judging by the masses of visitors, however -- including, often, groups of retirees who make the eight-kilometer trip to the theme park in chartered buses -- it is Lapland that has left them all behind.

During the peak winter season, Santa Claus receives them in his office at Santa Park for nine hours each day (seven during the off season). And for €17, he's also ready to have his snapshot taken with children and families. But don't ask him for a photo during his two-hour lunch break. This is Santa and he's got more important things to do -- like reading the local paper Lapin Kansa, or the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat. He's got to keep that naughty and nice list up to date.

The park belongs to 30 different companies whose proprietors make a living hawking lambskin hats, reindeer pelts and stuffed animals. And business may soon get even better. "Soon the first 20,000 Chinese will be arriving," says a visibly pleased Marja Selin, a colleague of Hiltunen. Last year, she personally escorted former Chinese President Jiang Zemin through the park after he travelled all the way across the Arctic Circle to visit the ornamented headquarters of Christmas's top diplomat.

The man in red and white immortalizes his exotic guests in a very dog-eared and marked-up world atlas -- an important tool for a man who has to circumnavigate the globe in his sleigh once a year. "My good friend Lucio Salonio lives in Antarctica, where he works at a research station," he explains, pointing to a muddle of arrows he's drawn on the map. "Last winter he spent his 'summer vacation' in Rovaniemi, a special honor." And just a few days ago, he received a visit from Australia -- an exchange student, who had hung out in the Finnish north for a year, and her family. Her parents wanted to know what kind of solitude she'd been living in up here.

From a war time casualty to Santa's workshop

The landscape in the Lapland is spectacular, but if it weren't for Santa, there might be little reason to visit Rovaniemi. It's now a fabled town, but history hasn't been kind. When the Germans retreated at the end of World War II, they completely destroyed the city, and today there are few attractions outside the Santa Claus myth factory. But the people here certainly seem to like it.

Satu Lehtola, a woman of Sami Lapland ancestry, recently moved to the area after marrying a reindeer herder. "In contrast to southern Finland, practically nobody here suffers from depression," she says. "That's because, until autumn, there is very little rain here -- and then, within a few weeks, everything is white from the snow." The people here, she says, are well-balanced and quiet. Of course, she forgot to mention the Christmas spirit that forms the town's economic base.