North Pole Alaska – From Brrrr to Sweltering

" I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” ~Charles Dickens

I’ve always wondered about the city of North Pole. Do Santa and Mrs. Clause really live there? Recently a friend of mind visited her son in Fairbanks (about 14 miles from North Pole) and she just had to visit the home of Christmas. When I sarcastically asked if she got her picture taken with Santa Claus she whipped out a photo – complete with reindeer - of her family posing with the man himself. Apparently the town is really trying to push the whole Christmas theme, complete with year round pictures, and street names such as Mistletoe, Santa Claus Lane, Snowman Lane, Kris Kringle, Saint Nicholas Drive, North Star Drive, and of course you can’t forget Blitzen, and Donnor.

So what’s the deal with the name? Apparently someone had a bright idea back in the late 40’s that naming the city North Pole might be a way to cash in on the whole commercial Christmas aspect. The founders envisioned a top toy manufacturing city where they could proudly stamp the words “Made in the North Pole”. If it were that simple, cities in China would rename themselves “America” just so that they could make the claim their products were “Made in America”. For whatever reason (probably because it was more difficult to ship toys the old-fashioned way through mounds of snow rather than by magic sleigh), the whole toy industry thing never took off. But today, citizens are pretty dedicated to getting the whole “Theme City” thing going. My friend said that it was really kind of cool – Christmas in August. Complete with candy canes and Christmas decorations – all the while enjoying weather in the high 80’s!

So what’s it like to live there? I for one could not tolerate the winters. Temperatures as low as MINUS 78 have been recorded and at the darkest point of the year (December 21) it’s only light for 3 hours and 42 minutes!! Now I know on the other end of the scale you get lots of light in the summer – almost 22 hours – but I for one would not be taking advantage of all that light. I’m an eight hour a night sleep kind of girl! But people seem to love it. My friend’s son lives in Fairbanks and he adores Alaska. The air is dry, moderate rainfall and he said the people are great. He wouldn’t move back to the South for anything. That’s the great thing about this country – there’s a perfect State for everyone!

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