The International Santa Claus

Just like every year it is time to write the Christmas wish list to Santa Claus and so I asked my daughters to prepare them and put them on my desk so I could bring them to the post office and have them sent to the North Pole. Of course my daughters know that in the year 2008 Santa Claus uses email and basically they don’t really believe in him anymore anyway but still we are keeping this ritual alive and enjoy it.

 When the wish lists arrived I planned to inform the grannies in Germany and the uncles and aunts all over the world about the desired presents but unexpectedly I found myself with a huge challenge I never had in the years before.

 A teddy bear is a teddy bear and crayons are crayons and the concept is easy to translate into other languages. But now I saw on the list names of Game Boy and computer games and realized they are not just to translate. The marketing guys at Electronic Arts or Nintendo think they are particularly clever in inventing different names for the same game for the different countries, adapting them according to linguistic or cultural particularities, and they even change the packaging. Great job, but apparently none of them is raising kids in a multinational family or their wives do the Santa Claus coordination.

And so I found myself doing this Google research and surfing through chat rooms and forums trying to figure out under what name “Stelle sul Ghiaccio” was issued in Germany, an incredibly senseless way to loose time.

 In the end I wrote my own wish list and number 1. on the list is not a rock from Tiffany’s but a International Santa Claus website, that mums with an International family can consult when they have difficulties explaining to their relatives in another country what item their kids want. 

(OK, I admit that depending on the size of the rock I might put it back on number 1, once my anger about the computer games industry is gone)

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