There is a town in the Upper Peninsula called Christmas, and yes, it is exactly as wonderful as that sounds. A 35-foot Santa Claus waves at you from the side of the highway, the streets have names like Jingle Bell Lane, and up here it is Christmas every single day of the year.
No, we did not make that up. It is a real place, right on M-28, a few miles west of Munising on the Lake Superior shore.
Here is how it happened. Back in 1938, a man from Munising opened a little roadside factory to make Christmas gifts and decorations. The factory itself did not last. A fire took it out a couple of years later. But the name stuck, the community grew up around it, and the whole place leaned all the way into the bit.
And it leaned in hard. Drive through today and you will find that towering Santa by the road, a pair of Santa and Mrs. Claus figures standing beside a big north pole post, and street signs that read like a holiday wish list. Jingle Bell Lane. Candy Cane Lane. The casino in town runs with the theme. So do the cabins and the local watering holes. It is the kind of place where it is acceptable, even encouraged, to feel festive in the middle of July.
But the part that really makes Christmas special is the mail.
The town got its own post office back in 1966, and ever since, people from all over the country, and even around the world, have been sending their holiday cards here for one reason. They want that Christmas postmark. There is something about a card that arrives stamped from a town named Christmas that no store-bought sticker can match.
The original Christmas post office has since closed, so these days the nearby Munising post office keeps the tradition going. If you want your cards postmarked from Christmas this year, you can mail them to the Munising post office with a note asking for the Christmas stamp, or drop them off in person. They will handle the rest. Every December, the requests pour in.
Here is the thing, though. Christmas is not just a gimmick by the road. It sits in one of the prettiest corners of the U.P. you will find.
The town is wrapped in the Hiawatha National Forest and perched right on Lake Superior, with sandy beaches, big water views, and the old stone ruins of a 19th-century iron furnace just down the shore at Bay Furnace. There is camping, kayaking in summer, and snowmobiling once the snow piles up, which around here it very much does. Christmas even has its own little lighthouse keeping watch over the bay. And it is right up the road from Munising, the gateway to the cliffs and caves of Pictured Rocks.
So it is a true slice of the U.P., one that happens to have a giant Santa out front.
For Yoopers who grew up here and have since scattered downstate or further, Christmas is one of those funny, warm little landmarks you forget you love until somebody brings it up. You have almost certainly driven past that Santa. You have probably groaned at the pun and grinned at the very same time.
And that is the charm of the place. In a region full of hard winters and harder people, somebody decided to build a town that refuses to stop celebrating. A few hundred folks call it home, and they have kept it merry for the better part of a century.
So this year, if the homesickness creeps in, you know what to do. Send yourself a card. Have it stamped from Christmas. And keep a little piece of the U.P. on your mantel all year long.
Sources: the Mining Journal; WLUC TV6 (Upper Michigan’s Source); the Lake Superior Circle Tour; and the Munising Visitors Bureau.
Featured image credit: Photo by KiwiDeaPi via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped/enhanced for YooperHub.
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