Plan Christmas Eve and Christmas Day around Santa and around dinner. Santa's office and the main post office at the village keep their usual December hours on both days, so meeting him on Christmas Eve itself is possible. Restaurants are the problem: several close or serve only hotel guests, others run a set Christmas menu, so book a table as early as you can or eat where you are staying. Check every tour's Christmas dates directly.
Christmas in Rovaniemi runs on two calendars. Santa’s own places keep going as
if it were any other day in December. The town around them keeps Christmas the
Finnish way, as a quiet family holiday, and that is where visitors get caught
out.
Santa does not take Christmas off
Santa Claus Village is open every day of the year. Santa Claus Office keeps its
long December hours, eight in the morning to eight at night, straight through
from the end of November to 3 January, and the main post office is open nine to
eight every day from 1 December to 6 January, with no exceptions listed for
Christmas Eve or Christmas
Day.1Snowman World, the snow park in the village, is open over Christmas too.
Ratings read from Tripadvisor. The shaded compartment left of the divider holds any score below 4.0. We record the score only; review counts and review text are not part of our comparison.
Dinner is the problem
Restaurants are where the Finnish Christmas shows. On the city’s own list for
this season, several restaurants are closed to the public on Christmas Eve or
serve only their hotel guests, a larger group runs a special Christmas menu on
the 24th and 25th, and a few stay open as normal, some for walk-ins
only.2 The tourist board’s advice
is to book a table well in advance and to check each restaurant’s own page,
because hours can still
change.2
In practice that means deciding where Christmas dinner will be when you book
the accommodation, not when you arrive. A hotel that serves a Christmas dinner
to its own guests solves the question outright; an apartment without one means
booking a restaurant months rather than days ahead, or cooking.
Build the two days around fixed points
The simplest Christmas plan has one fixed point each day: Santa on one, a booked
dinner on both, and anything else fitted around them. Tours that run over the
holidays are worth booking early, and on the quietest days of the year a hotel pickup is
worth more than usual. If a private meeting with Santa is part of the plan,
the private Santa visit guide covers
what it costs and what it adds.
Usually, but nobody can promise it for a given year, and no operator does. The safaris that need snow publish seasons that normally include Christmas, and the winter activities calendar shows which. Check the cancellation and weather terms of anything you book for the 24th or 25th, so a cancelled tour on Christmas Day can be moved rather than lost.
Do the safaris run on Christmas Day?
Many do, but the dates are set by each operator and published, if at all, on its own booking calendar rather than in one place. Look at the calendar for the specific days before you build a plan around them, and book the 24th and 25th early where they are offered, since there are only two of them. A tour that collects from your hotel also solves the question of transport on days when the town is at its quietest.
Is SantaPark open over Christmas?
SantaPark runs a winter season that includes the Christmas weeks, but its Christmas dates on the city's restaurant list still show last year's, so check its own page for this season before booking. Whether it is worth adding to a Christmas trip at all is a separate question, and our page on SantaPark sets out what the ticket buys and how short its season is compared with Santa Claus Village.
Lapland Handbook is written by its editorial staff in Rovaniemi. Every price, age limit and group size in a comparison is read from the operator's own page and marked "Not stated" when the operator does not publish it. Each guide names who should not book, and names the operator that suits each kind of group, whichever it is.
Rovaniemi's winter tours do sell out – December and the week around New Year first, and the small-group ones before the rest. Booking here goes straight to the operator at their own published price, and the code LH10 takes 10% off it.
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