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| | The Santa with the cell phone |
 | | Only one Sami, or Laplander, has been there (and then only once), and he has told the story. |
 | | When Joulupukki shows up, traditionally clad in a coat not of red but of wolf pelts, he can be with his wife, who might be carrying a large rush basket of presents, or with an elf (a Japanese elf paid a visit recently to Sirpa Tuomainen's mother in Paltamo, her small village in the north). |
 | | As one foreign observer put it last Christmas in the magazine Helsinki Happens, "the happiness and fulfillment of Finnish childhood -- and therefore the future well-being of the Finnish state -- depends on it." |
| www.sfgate.com /cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/20/HOGV03PHCJ1.DTL (640 words) |
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