The Mind of A Six-Year-Old

[Eldan]

I also grew up* in Britan and Father Christmas's address was frequently (but not always) said to be at the North Pole. I always assumed that people had gone there and had seen his house, but there were no photos for the same reason photos of my friends' houses weren't just lying around: you didn't take pictures of other people's houses unless you knew them.

Also, for some reason when I learned of the two poles, I was completely convinced he lived next to the stripey barber's shop true north, but I don't know why I thought that. Possibly because magnetic north moved around so nobody could build a house on it, but I'm not sure I knew about magnetic north moving then...

*possibly later than you did, as I remember hearing about both sides of the legend when I was told Christmas stories.

Interestingly, in Switzerland, we saw them as two distinct, but kind of similar figures, when I was a kid. There was the guy from TV (TV was almost entirely dubbed American TV), who we knew as "The Christmas Man" (Weihnachtsmann). He has a flying sleigh, comes on Christmas and brings gifts. He lives at the north pole with a race of kobolds who build his gifts (they arent' elves. Clearly. Elves are entirely different. Elves fly. (I think my only context for elves at that point was Peter Pan, where the version of the book I had read to me translated "fairy" as "elf".)
Then there's Santa Claus (Samichlaus), who's a different, but similar figure. Dresses a lot alike, at least. He lives "nearby in the forest" (We could go visit his cottage! It was really magical!). He comes to your house on December the Sixth, reads you a list of what you did well and what you did wrong this year and then hands you a small bag of sweets. He doesn't have a flying sleigh, he walks with a donkey or horse who carries his bag of gifts. He also doesn't have elves, he has a single grim servant in a black cloak who always threatens to beat up or abduct "bad" kids, but never does.

I remember it taking me years to really figure out that they were supposed to be the same guy.