My nephew declared over the phone that he thinks Jultomten —Santa Claus—may be fake. I can tell he's fishing for confirmation, so I only offered nonverbal responses in a neutral tone during our conversation. His main reason for suspecting that something fishy is going on is that his dad often has a last minute errand and leaves the house right before Jultomten shows up and then miss the whole visit. My brother—my nephew’s dad—mixes it up some years and trades duties of impersonating Santa with a neighbor or his brother in law. It’s hard for parents in Sweden to keep the myth of Santa alive, because the children there expect Jultomten to shop up in person on the evening of December 24 th and hand out gifts from his big sack. He knocks hard on the door, usually three knocks, and asks in a boisterous voice if there are any nice children in the house. The confident kids shout yes. The rest look to their parents for confirmation that they’ve behaved well enough through the year to...
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