Anna Selby and her son Christian travel to the Arctic Circle in search of Santa...

It's coming up to that time of year again. So what does the over-indulgent parent or grandparent give to the child who has everything? If your suggestions of grottoes and pantos are greeted with infant scorn, fear not. You can restore your reputation for imaginative treats in one blow. Take the little darlings to meet the real Father Christmas. In Lapland.

It is night-time when you arrive at Rovaniemi, which sits precisely on the Finnish Arctic Circle. And it continues to be night-time for most of your stay. Daylight in December starts at around 10am and finishes at 2.30pm. In between a light veil of greyness is cast over a world of snow and pine and birch, creating a white-green monochrome where reindeer outnumber people at more than two to one.

Fun in the snow and reindeer safaris
Canterbury Travel, who organise the search for Santa Claus, manage to turn Lapland into an Arctic theme park where you're likely to run into elves in the forest wearing jingling jesters' hats and snow queens in glittering medieval gowns. These are just the trailers building up to the main feature - meeting Santa - but this is a fairytale atmosphere with a cosy English feel to it (nothing grim or Grimm here).

The next few days are spent in a hectic search for Santa, which provides the opportunity for trying out all kinds of curious Arctic transport. There were snowmobiles, skis, reindeer sleighs, snowshoes, husky sleighs and a troika pulled at dashing speed by a pair of horses.

My hopes of communing with primeval nature were at their highest at the prospect of the reindeer safari. Wrapped in reindeer furs in the silent, empty forest, the only sounds were the creak of wood on snow and leather on fur. Romantic notions are soon dispelled, though, when you have a five-year-old next to you gleefully shouting, 'Mummy, quick, let me take a photo. The reindeer's doing a poo.' On our return, not perhaps surprisingly, 50 per cent of our photos seemed to feature reindeer bottoms.

Sleeping in an igloo
Rather more surprisingly, we were told it was hot for the time of year - -5 when the week before it had been -35. Christian came up with the wizard wheeze, therefore, that we forsake our gloriously overheated log cabin (with log fire and our own sauna) to sleep in an igloo for a night. Communing with Arctic nature suddenly seemed to lose its charm but I agreed at least to have a look. The only trouble with an igloo map in this part of the world is that there are no landmarks. One fir tree in the snow looks pretty much like any other.

While we were thus walking round in circles we first met Hilary who was there on her honeymoon and on a similarly fruitless search for the ice rink and then an Irish film crew, cameras muffled against the cold, who had spotted the igloos earlier. There were two of them. The big igloo was small and the door of the small igloo couldn't possibly admit anyone bigger than Christian. Once inside, however, light filtered through the ice blocks and it was as bright as it was outside. Crawling on your hands and knees over the floor strewn with pine branches, their scent is released into the air. It smells of Christmas and I began to get quite enthusiastic about sleeping there. Christian, however, demurred. 'It'll be dark, Mummy, and we might get eaten by a bear.'

All the trimmings
You might think Christmas in Lapland means you escape your family but, unfortunately, you get stuck with everybody else's. Breakfast and dinner take place in a vast log cabin and the air rings to threats, bribes and howls of rage. At no time is the sound of parent stifling tantrum absent.

The day before we left, we finally did find Santa. Rudolf was tied up outside his log cabin, so we knew we were in the right place. Inside, the whole place glowed in the light of fire and twinkling tree and there he was, sitting on a stool covered in reindeer skins and absolutely perfect. For the first time in his life, Christian was struck dumb with awe. And me?

Like all the other cynical mothers, I came out with a lump in my throat. And there was just a moment there when I almost believed, too.

Information
Canterbury Travel offers day trips and four-night stays between November and end-December. Tel: 01923 822388
Day trip (with huskies, reindeers, skidoos): £399 adults, £379 children
Budget trip (kit, transportation, trip to Santa park): £229 for adult, £224 for child
Four-night trip: two adults and two children in an open-plan cabin, 23-27 Dec: £1180 per adult, £1080 per child