A trip to see Santa Claus in Lapland is at the top of every child’s Christmas list. For parents of true believers, this poses a specific problem that no next-day delivery service can solve. Bookings are in such high demand with operators such as Santa’s Lapland that trips to the far north are sold out in 2023 and availability in 2024 is already very limited.
Leaving aside demand, trips to see Santa Claus over two days can cost almost £3,000 per person. This poses a second problem for ski vacation-loving parents like me: you can easily spend a week on the slopes with your loved ones for a fraction of the price. Skiing or Santa Claus – it’s a debate as hotly contested as the naughty list.
I was in the middle of this competition last Christmas when my six-year-old daughter Evie begged for a chance to come face to face with the big man. It’s magical to see your children so fascinated by youthful optimism, but I have to confess: I chose skiing.
Who needs to see Santa Claus in Lapland when you have fresh powder for snowballs, a Christmas market with open fire and waffles and skiing on your doorstep, and change in your pocket? Not us (at least that’s what I wanted to prove).
Forget Finland
Be the first to find a destination that rivals Lapland. I set my sights on the baroque town of St. Johann in Austria’s Tyrol, an hour’s drive from Innsbruck airport, where a winter family holiday is packed with festivities without the eye-watering price tag.
Before Christmas, the Alps are magical and there are plenty of other traditions that are just as enchanting as Santa’s festive Finnish heart. So enchanting, in fact, that your child will quickly forget that he or she wasn’t actually introduced to the real thing, or so I hoped.
Because there is only one caveat. Although there are many snow-covered pine forests, snow and glitter in Austria, the locals do not believe in Santa Claus. Instead, it is Christkind (the Christ child, baby Jesus) who brings the presents, and the big day to celebrate with family is Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. A small detail, for sure.
My daughter Evie, my mother and I learned none of this from Christian, our ski instructor, on the first day of our three-night holiday (one more than we would have spent in Lapland) in mid-December.
We had arrived in time for the first day of the winter season and our hotel, the Sentido Alpenhotel Kaiserfels, was a short slide away from the Eichenhof gondola on the edge of St. Johann’s 43 km easy slopes (of which there are are even further away). away at neighboring Kitzbühel).
With a sixty year age difference, we had chosen to use Christian’s private services rather than splitting up into different classes. It was Evie’s fourth time on snow, so the short gondola ride to the middle station and a gentle blue descent back down was ideal. As she followed our guide’s skis closely and mimicked airplane wings with her arms to help her turn, my mother and I were happy to be back on the snow so early in the season.
Tyrolean traditions
I had promised Evie a Christmas trip full of traditions, I just didn’t specify what they were. So after a morning of skiing we headed to the St. Johann Christmas Market for some festive fun, Austrian style.
Located in the historic center of the village, with its ornate buildings painted in green, yellow and cream, the market was as atmospheric as we expected from a famous Germanic Christmas event. A collection of beautifully decorated wooden chalets lined the square, selling everything from homemade wooden decorations and knitted scarves and gloves to locally distilled gin, jewelery and honey.
The cookie baking stall was Evie’s perfect introduction to Christmas in Austria. She was given dough and shown by two local volunteers how to best make sweet, delicate cookies from it. They shared folklore stories about the friendly Saint Nicholas and his more sinister companion Krampus. The pair are an important part of Advent in Austria.
The dreaded but also long-awaited Krampus Day is December 5, when people dress up in costumes and get up to mischief, followed 24 hours later by Sinterklaas Day, when well-behaved children are rewarded with sweets, peanuts and tangerines. Mesmerized by the stories, there wasn’t a single question from Evie about Santa Claus.
If we had been in Lapland we might have eaten something leipajuusto (a soft cheese, grilled and topped with berries); but in St. Johann we opted for the much-preferred waffles with chocolate sauce and ate them next to a roaring fire pit, washed down with a mug of Campari and hibiscus mulled wine. Other families had brought their own chopsticks and were toasting dough around them in the fire. Called stockbrotwe later found a cabin selling them to treat ourselves.
Family fortunes
The next day we were back on the slopes. Any joy Evie might have had at meeting Santa paled into insignificance when she reached the bottom of her first red run, which she celebrated by starting a family snowball fight.
A full day on the slopes is a rarity with kids on a ski holiday, so instead we spent the rest of our time exploring the winter wonderland. Some wouldn’t be out of place in Lapland – a horse-drawn sleigh ride through the trees at Gasteig for example – others wouldn’t – Murmi’s Kinderland, a soft play center in Kirchdorf in Tyrol.
As expected, Santa Claus was noticeably absent during our trip, but that didn’t detract from the Christmas spirit. I dare say Evie barely noticed. We returned home feeling fantastically festive and with our own new tradition – skiing as a family – a tradition that Evie will hopefully always continue to believe in.
Rebecca and her family were guests of the Austrian National Tourist Board