North Pole Wonderland
Adaeze from Lagos, Nigeria
Dear Santa,
My name is Adaeze and I am ten years old. I live in Lagos, Nigeria, which my uncle says is the city that never sleeps, which I believe because I have tried sleeping in it and it is very difficult when there is a generator running next door and someone on the street is selling things very loudly and a wedding is happening somewhere nearby even though it is Tuesday. Lagos does not care what day it is. Lagos is always happening.
Dear Adaeze. Lagos is one of the most alive cities on my entire route and I mean that with full sincerity and both ears. I have been delivering to Lagos for as long as Lagos has been Lagos, which is a long time, and every year without exception the city surprises me. The energy from the sleigh altitude is unlike anywhere else on Earth. It looks like someone tipped a bucket of light sideways and it never stopped falling. The generator noise, for the record, does not bother the reindeer. Dasher says it reminds him of the workshop in November. He means this as a compliment.
Santa, I want to ask you about the North Pole Wonderland. Because every Christmas in Lagos there are decorations and lights and displays and some of them say "North Pole Wonderland" on them, and there is fake snow that is actually white foam, and there are pictures of reindeer and pictures of you, and my little brother Chukwuemeka touched the fake snow and ate some of it before anyone could stop him and my mother said she did not want to know what it was made of and nobody told her.
The fake snow at Christmas displays around the world is one of my favourite things and I will tell you why. Every single version of it — the foam, the cotton wool, the spray-on white, the machine that blows bubbles — represents someone in a warm country deciding that the cold northern thing that is part of my story deserves to be present in their celebration anyway, and then solving the problem of not having actual snow with whatever they have available. This is exactly the spirit of Christmas. Chukwuemeka eating the foam is a different matter and I would encourage a conversation with him about what we put in our mouths, but his instinct to engage fully with the North Pole Wonderland was correct and I respect it.
Santa, what is the North Pole Wonderland actually like? Because the display in Lagos has very good lights and a man in a red suit who my cousin said was not really you and I told her that was a very rude thing to say and she said she was just being realistic and I said Christmas is not the time for being realistic and she said when is the time and I did not have an answer but I still think I was right.
You were completely right, and I want to answer your question properly because you asked it properly. The North Pole is cold in a way that Lagos cannot fully prepare you for — not the cold of an air conditioner, not the cold of a refrigerator, but the cold of a place that means it, that has been cold since before anyone was keeping records and intends to continue. The sky in December is dark for most of the day, and when the sun does appear it is low and pale and seems apologetic, like it knows it is not doing its best work. The snow is not foam. It is dense and quiet and covers everything so completely that the world looks like a drawing that someone forgot to colour in.
But here is the thing, Adaeze. The North Pole Wonderland in the Lagos display, with its foam snow and its lights and its man in a red suit who is doing his best — that is not a lesser version of the real thing. It is its own thing. It is what happens when a city of twenty million people, in thirty-degree heat in December, decides that wonder is worth having even if you have to manufacture the snow yourself. The Lagos version of the North Pole Wonderland is, in some ways, more committed than the original. The original has no choice but to be cold and snowy. Lagos chose it. That choice is what Christmas is actually made of.
I have some questions about the actual North Pole.
Is it true there is no darkness at Christmas? My teacher said something about this but then she got confused and said actually there is only darkness and I did not know which one to believe.
Your teacher was confused because the Arctic is genuinely confusing to explain and I respect her for attempting it. Here is the truth: in December, the North Pole is in polar night, which means the sun does not rise at all. It is dark for the entire day. This is the opposite of what happens in June, when the sun does not set — the famous midnight sun. So at Christmas, the North Pole is actually in complete darkness, which is why the lights of the workshop and the stars above and, on Christmas Eve, Rudolph's nose are so important. We are working entirely in the dark. This feels appropriate. A great deal of the most important work in the world gets done entirely in the dark.
Do you have Jollof rice at the North Pole?
This question has come up in North Pole correspondence before and I will give you the same answer I gave then: we have attempted Jollof rice at the North Pole on three occasions. The first attempt was in 1987 and was a learning experience. The second attempt was in 2003 and was better but still not correct. The third attempt was in 2019 when an elf named Taiwo joined the team from Ibadan and made it properly, and the entire workshop stopped working for forty minutes, which has never happened before or since, including during the Gerald Situation, which was a significant IT incident. Taiwo is now in charge of all North Pole special occasions food. The waiting list for her Jollof rice at the Christmas Eve staff dinner is longer than the naughty list in a busy year.
Does Father Christmas come to Nigeria or is it just Santa? Because in my family we say Father Christmas and my school says Santa Claus and my grandmother says Baba Krismas and I want to know which one is you.
All three. I answer to all of them and I have been answering to all of them for longer than the names have existed in their current forms. Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Baba Krismas, Papa Noël, Sinterklaas, Ded Moroz — these are all me, in the way that the same person can be "mother" and "Dr. Okonkwo" and "the woman who makes the best egusi soup in the building" depending on who is speaking and what they need. Your grandmother's Baba Krismas is no less correct than your school's Santa Claus. Language is how love travels. All of these names are love traveling. I show up for all of them.
Why does Christmas in Nigeria feel different from Christmas in the pictures? Because the pictures always show snow and fireplaces and heavy coats and in Lagos we have Christmas in heat and everyone is wearing nice clothes and there is a lot of food and music and the whole street celebrates together and it is very loud and I love it but it does not look like the pictures.
The pictures are wrong, Adaeze. I want to be very clear about this. The pictures show one version of Christmas — a cold, northern, European version that became the dominant visual because of history and publishing and the particular countries that produced the most Christmas cards in the nineteenth century. But Christmas in Lagos — the nice clothes and the heat and the enormous amounts of food and the music and the whole street celebrating together so loudly that sleeping is not an option — that is not a lesser Christmas. That is not Christmas minus the snow. That is Christmas with everything that Lagos has, which is considerable, which is frankly more than most places on my route have, and which produces a celebration that I look forward to every single year with a specific and genuine excitement that I do not feel about every stop.
The North Pole Wonderland in the Lagos display has fake snow because real snow is unavailable. But real community, real joy, real music, real food, real noise at levels that suggest the whole city has agreed to celebrate simultaneously — those are not available everywhere. Lagos has them in abundance. The pictures should be showing Lagos. The pictures have been getting this wrong for a long time and I intend to raise it.
My wish list is: a new school bag because mine has a broken zip and every day something falls out and I spend a lot of time retrieving things from the floor which is time I could use for other things. Also I want my father to come home for Christmas because he is working in Abuja and he said he might not make it and Christmas without my father is a smaller Christmas. Also I want the North Pole Wonderland display to come back next year because Chukwuemeka has recovered from the foam incident and would like another opportunity.
The school bag is already noted and the zip situation will be resolved. You should not be spending your time retrieving things from the floor — you have better things to do and I have seen what you are capable of when your hands are free. The North Pole Wonderland display: Chukwuemeka will get his second chance and I ask only that someone positions themselves between him and the foam before it becomes an incident again. And your father — Adaeze, I cannot make work schedules and I cannot move Abuja closer to Lagos, and I want to be honest with you about what is in my power and what is not. What I can tell you is that a father who worries about missing Christmas is a father who knows what Christmas at home means, and a man who knows what he is missing is a man who is trying to get there. Hold space for him. Leave the light on, metaphorically and otherwise. I will see what I can do with the roads.
Thank you for reading my letter Santa. My mother helped me with the spelling. She said it was an excellent letter and then she said she hoped I was not being too demanding about my father because he is working very hard, and I said I was not demanding, I was wishing, and she said that was a good distinction and she looked like she might cry a little but she said she was fine.
The distinction between demanding and wishing is one of the most important distinctions a person can learn, and you understood it at ten, which is earlier than most. Your mother looked like she might cry because the wish is her wish too and hearing her child say it out loud made it real in a way that is both beautiful and difficult. She is fine. She is also wishing. This is a house full of people who love each other and want the same thing for Christmas, and that is already more than a great many houses on my route have, and I mean that gently and truly. Merry Christmas, Adaeze. Merry Christmas to your mother, to Chukwuemeka who will get his second chance with the foam, and to your father in Abuja who I will be visiting regardless and who I think already knows what he needs to do. Feliz Natal. E kaabo. Joyeux Noël. The North Pole speaks Lagos too.
Merry Christmas Santa.
Your friend,
Adaeze Okonkwo
Lagos, Nigeria
P.S. Chukwuemeka wants me to add that the foam was not bad. He said it tasted like nothing but in a good way. He is not sure what he was expecting. Neither are we.
Tell Chukwuemeka that "nothing but in a good way" is a perfectly legitimate sensory experience and that he has described approximately thirty percent of North Pole cooking during the months of January through October before Taiwo took over. He has a promising future in food criticism if he is willing to apply the same openness to things that are not foam. I believe he is.
northpolewonderland.com https://santaclaus.top/north-pole-wonderland/
Comments
Post a Comment