There's one place in Michigan's Upper Peninsula where it is Christmas all year long.
It's easy to spot the little town of Christmas, which is on M-28 at St. Nicholas Avenue just a few miles west of Munising and the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
Just look for the 35-foot-tall Santa Claus!
Santa stands outside of a year round Christmas store called Santa's Workshop and just a short distance away from one of the area's other big attractions, the Kewadin Casino.
Christmas had its start in 1938, when a Munising man named Julius Thorson opened a factory to make Christmas gifts here. The factory burned down in 1940 and never re-opened, but the town kept its holiday-themed name and got its own post office in 1966.
Mail started pouring into the post office with requests for re-mailing people's holiday cards with a Christmas postmark. Michigan became the issuing site for the First Day Cover for the 1966 Christmas stamps, and the tradition of offering re-mailing service for holiday cards continues today.
We stopped at Christmas in June and saw a sign offering the mail service at the store.
It was fun to get a taste of the holidays in June by browsing the store's stock of Christmas ornaments and decorations, including at least a few locally made ornaments like the little sled I bought with a cut-out of Michigan to hang on my tree this year.
Want a typically touristy photo op? You can stand next to the three-story-tall plywood Santa or the considerably shorter Frosty the Concrete Snowman, both billed as the "world's largest" of their kind.
Santa wasn't in Christmas when we visited, but Santa's Workshop hosts Santa so visiting children can check in with him many Sunday afternoons throughout the year and adds Saturday afternoons to his schedule of appearances during December.
© Dominique King 2013 All rights reserved
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