CHRISTMAS

Region: Pictured Rocks/Munising/Au Train

Christmas was a promotional town name from the start. An entrepreneur in 1938 bought this swampland and built a gift factory. The holiday gift industry still lives, but for many has been eclipsed by the casino down the road with the green roof.

Alger County's first town, Onota, was built around Bay Furnace outside today's Christmas but destroyed by fire in 1877. Fifty-two years later, Christmas, an unincorporated area with a few motels and resorts, was given its name by state conservation officer turned entrepreneur Julius Thorsen. His Christmas Industries shop, constructed in 1939, made a very limited product line, doilies and rugs, for instance, before it burned down in 1940, vanquishing

Tourists stop here to send post cards and gifts postmarked from Christmas.

Thorsen's dreams of creating an extensive tourist complex.

The name survived, and the souvenir shops and roadside Santas and reindeer, cut out of plywood, sprang up along the highway. Much later, Christmas got a postal substation so it can mail messages with a "Christmas" cancellation during the holiday season. Roadside Santas live on in front of souvenir shops. Santa's Workshop (906-387-2929) claims to have the world's tallest Santa, the world's tallest Old Woman in the Shoe, and the world's largest concrete Frosty the Snowman. Sundays from 2 to 7, April through November, children can meet Santa face-to-face to tell him how good they have been and put in requests for Christmas gifts.

A fairly big Kewadin Casino (906-387-5475) is along M-28 here, open seven days a week. It's a branch of the five-casino empire of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. The 48-room Pair-A-Dice Inn motel (906-387-3500) was been built next to the casino, but it is currently closed.

With its prominent location right on M-28, the Kewadin casino here has prospered. There are 211 slots as well as blackjack and poker tables.

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PLACES AROUND CHRISTMAS TO

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