Christmas Story (2007)

CHRISTMAS STORY offers a version of how Santa got to be Santa. In the dead of a remote Finnish winter, young Nikolas (Otto Gustavsson) is left alone when his parents and baby sister are killed in an accident. Other families in the village, though poor and barely able to feed themselves, vow to raise Nikolas, each family for one year at a time. Every year at Christmas, Nikolas must pack up and move to the next generous family. Before he goes, he whittles animal figurines for the children of the family he's stayed with. In each succeeding year he adds gifts for the new families. In the sixth year, an early frost kills the harvest and the lake yields no fish, so no family can afford to take him in. A woodworker named Isaak (Karl Vaananen), who delivers handmade goods to the village every Christmas, offers to take the boy, with the intention of using him as slave labor. After a year of hard work, Nikolas learns the carpentry trade and earns Isaak's respect. Isaak treats Nikolas like a son from then on. Decades pass and Isaak leaves his workshop and savings to Nikolas (the adult is played by Hannu-Pekka Bjorkman), who decides to use them to bring presents to children in all the surrounding villages. Travel and the large load require a sleigh, reindeer (which Nikolas must train), and for an unexplained reason, a red suit. And so the legend is born. When Nikolas pledges to deliver gifts for his last Christmas, it seems he has died, but he later reappears to friends as a happy apparition flying through the sky in his suit, pulled by reindeer. Much of the Santa story is explained, but the flying part will have to be explained to curious children by their parents.