CHILDREN who write to Father Christmas in Greenland rather than Finland may find that their letters go unanswered in future now that state subsidies to the elves have been withdrawn and their cash reserves are running low.

Boys and girls all over the world have a choice of two addresses to which they can send letters to Father Christmas and be confident of receiving a reply. Both Father Christmas of Nuuk, Greenland, and Father Christmas of Rovaniemi, Lapland, claim to reside in Santa’s official grotto and have paid helpers to write back to children.

However, while Father Christmas in Lapland benefits from generous public handouts and received a postbag of nearly 500,000 letters last year, Father Christmas in Greenland has fallen on hard times. The government of the former Danish colony will no longer pay for him to reply to his comparatively modest 50,000 letters a year and he has been hit by a cash flow problem which is thoroughly out of keeping with Christmas tradition.

Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, has laid claim to be Father Christmas’s true headquarters ever since Donald Duck visited the town with his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie to see Santa in a Walt Disney cartoon film in 1934.

For years Father Christmas’s Nuuk-based global mailing operation was run by the state-controlled Greenland Telecom company and subsidised by the government. After the subsidy was withdrawn during a contentious round of public spending cuts in 2002, Father Christmas and his helpers tried to keep the letter writing going by forming a private company and paying the £150,000 annual running costs from donations and out of their own pockets.

An anonymous commercial benefactor bailed them out at the 11th hour this year after the Danish media reported that they were in dire straits. But the future looks bleak according to Anders Laesoe, Santa’s chief helper.

“It doesn’t look as if we can collect enough money and that’s a shame because this is really something people up here feel strongly about,” he said.

“Father Christmas is the victim of a political disagreement and it looks like he’s going to need a Christmas miracle of his own.”

Greenland’s Father Christmas was voted the “real” Santa Claus in 2003 at the Annual Father Christmas World Congress. But the official Father Christmas is losing the letters battle to his rival in Rovaniemi.

The head postmistress at Rovaniemi, Paila Ollila, said last week that the trade ministry in Helsinki picked up 30% to 40% of the Finnish Santa’s £100,000 running costs. The money helps to pay for Rovaniemi’s crack team of 10 pensioner elves and 15 postal workers who are dedicated to replying to all letters with a clear address and a bit of content.

“We read all the letters and reply if they are good and they have some additional meaning to them — not if they are only gift lists,” Ollila said. “Father Christmas knows a hoax when he sees one.”

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