Amin, a farmer from the village of Krasny Kurgan in Russia’s southern Karachay-Cherkess Republic told the Mash Telegram channel about how he became a real life Santa.

Straight out of a fairytale, the story began one day in mid-December when Amin spotted a white helium balloon falling from the sky and right into his backyard. The farmer took interest in an unusual “intruder” and discovered that it had a hand-written letter attached to it.

“I understood that it was written by a child,” Amin recalled. But since the letter was in a foreign language, this was about all the farmer could make of the scrawl.

Intrigued, Amin enlisted the help of a translator who told him the letter was a message to Santa Claus, penned in German. It was written by Sophia, a 9-year-old from the Austrian city of Oberndorf bei Salzburg, some 17 km (11 mi) north of Salzburg.

In the letter, the girl told Santa she was dreaming of a fairytale princess’s dress, a tent shaped as a medieval castle, and a hoverboard for Christmas along with “lots of love for the whole world” so the people “don’t argue” as much anymore.

As soon as he learned about the letter’s contents, Amin could not sit idly and decided to take Santa’s duties upon himself, apparently thinking it was fate’s hand that had thrown the balloon his way.

The gifts were quite pricey for the farmer and he asked his friends for help, with most of them eager to participate in making the Christmas miracle happen. 

“All my friends – from everywhere, including Moscow – quickly collected the money,” he said, adding it was a race against the clock as “we had to make sure that the presents got there [to Oberndorf bei Salzburg] by December 25,” the day when Catholics around the world celebrate Christmas.

Not all fairy tales have a happy ending, but this one certainly did. An actor posing as a Santa handed the gifts over to the happy girl in her hometown. Sophia and her family were stunned when they were contacted by the people who helped Amin to find the girl and make her dreams come true. The elated 9-year-old told local media that she now wants to learn Russian. Sophia also revealed that she was definitely going to send another balloon with Christmas wishes next year to see where it ends up.

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