Do you believe in Santa Claus? Answer no to that in one small midwestern town and you’ll be more than a holiday heretic. You’ll be an obstacle to civic advancement. Welcome to Santa Claus, Ind., population 2,041, the only town in all America named after the Jolly Ol’ Elf and dedicated to celebrating the evergreen virtues of Christmas.

“It’s year-round, but we really ramp it all up come Christmas,” says Melissa Wilkinson of the Spencer County Visitors Bureau. “There are parades, tree lightings, chestnut roastings and fierce competitions between homes vying to be best decorated.

This is a town so crazy for Christmas that every street is named after something involving the holiday. There’s Candy Cane Lane, Mistletoe Drive, Arctic Circle and Balthazar, Melchior, and Kasper drives — the biblical names of the Three Wise Men.The three fire trucks at the Santa Claus Volunteer Fire Department are named Rudolph, Dasher and Blitzen, and a new EMT vehicle was dubbed Comet.

That’s not all. In Santa Claus, local Catholics worship at a church named St. Nicholas, guests overnight at Santa’s Lodge, and golfers from all over the world order Christmas Lake Golf Course logo golf balls to convert into dimpled, snow-white ornaments.

It’s almost like the town is striving to become some sort of holiday theme park, which is exactly what it would be if there wasn’t already an existing theme park devoted to that very purpose.

That would be Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari, located in — you guessed it — Santa Claus, Ind., about an hour west of Louisville.