Work/Life: Alison Battle on being ‘Mrs Lapland’ and keeping the magic of Christmas alive

Back in 2007, former primary school teacher Alison Battle and her ex-City trader husband, Mike, opened the doors to Lapland UK, a whimsical, magical Christmas experience set in the heart of Swinley Forest, near Ascot in Berkshire. Almost two decades later, it’s become one of the most popular Christmas attractions in the UK, welcoming over 1.5 million visitors since it opened, with tickets for the immersive experience selling out in hours. Here, Alison tells Stylist how her unusual career came about, and what she loves most about it. 

It’s hard to describe an average day, as there are two distinct parts to my year. Up until the event goes live, I’ll usually be found in our head office in Covent Garden. I’ll get on the train and spend the day checking in with everyone across the business. I’ll attend board meetings with the creative and commercial teams, the customer service team and any other standard meetings throughout the day. 

This year, things have really changed as we’ve added another venue. As well as our original one in Ascot, we now also have an event in Cheshire, so Mike and I are buzzing between the two. It’s very hard to pin down a typical day during our ‘live’ season, but we do like to be at the event as much as possible, acting as the cultural lead for the teams and for the visitors. Depending on who is on site, we may need to do meet and greets. I’ll do a walkaround with the commercial team so we can decide our direction for next year, consider what we need to order more of and so on.

I quickly realised that it wasn’t for me. I started at Yorkshire TV as an advertising sales co-ordinator, which meant I’d put advertising packages together for clients, working out where their ads would be featured. I tried it for a year, but I knew it wasn’t for me. I’ve never been commercially minded; I never set out to be a business person, and even now, I still don’t consider myself a business person.

I’d always loved children, so after a year of working in the corporate world, I went back to train as a teacher. I completed my post-graduate certificate in education and qualified as a primary teacher, specifically early years (key stage one), and I knew I’d found my happy place.

I couldn’t believe I was actually paid to do this job: it was the greatest joy being a reception and year one teacher. Every Saturday, you’d find me at a birthday party in a church hall somewhere in Lewisham because the children invited me – I adored it. 

I would have stayed teaching at that primary school happily ever after, if it wasn’t for the frustration I felt when I had my own sons. 

Back at school, I was passionate about the ‘wonder years’ of childhood – those short, precious years of what I like to call ‘imagination before information’. I could work with this idea beautifully in the classroom, and with my own boys at home, doing wonderful, magical things with them – especially at Christmas time, when childhood is at its purest form. That’s when you’re looking at the innocence of childhood wonder. 

But as we stepped out of our home and it came to the time-honoured meeting with Father Christmas, my frustration grew. I had four sons under the age of five: a four-year-old, a two-year-old and newborn identical twins, so I had one year of having them all at home with me before the eldest started school. We searched high and low for a magical place to share our vision of Christmas magic with them: we explored Christmas venues and activities around the UK, and we even took them up to Lapland, but we just couldn’t find anywhere that did it justice – everywhere we visited felt very transactional and over-commercialised. 

I got more and more upset as the years went by. In 2001, we went to the North Pole, which was staggeringly beautiful, but even that was a disappointment, and I came home thinking how much more magical it could and should have been. 

As parents, Christmas is a time when you’re looking at your child and holding their innocence and precious childhood in your hands, and I wanted to honour this with an authentic, beautiful, believable experience. The only way was to create it ourselves, and so the idea of Lapland UK was born. 

At this point, we’d never hosted anything larger than a family party, and we’re really not event people. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, and I think that’s why we went ahead with it. Anybody in the industry would have said we were absolutely mad to take it on, but we just had this passion and purpose that was driving us forward. We forged ahead with total ignorance, blind passion and a heart full of goodness. And thank goodness, because we’ve been on the journey of our lives. 

Our first year was a huge challenge, and it nearly finished us off. I was doing all sorts of things I’d never had to manage before, such as dealing with the public at scale. I was used to dealing with parents at school, but suddenly being responsible for 40,000 people was a huge challenge. The staffing and HR issues were always a worry, and a huge learning curve.

When we started out, Mike and I did everything ourselves – I was head of customer service, I answered every single email, I did all the orders for the shop. I had no choice but to jump into areas where I learned on the job. There just wasn’t the option of not doing it – people were going to turn up, and we had to manage. 

One year, I was even Mother Christmas live on BBC Breakfast on Christmas Eve. I’d never been on television in my life, but whatever was needed, we just did it and kept going. 

I absolutely have my place within the business. What I mostly do now, and what I’ve always done, is the creative side of the event. I call myself the voice of the children, so I always think about things from the child’s perspective. I do all of the writing for Lapland, so the stories, scripts, invitations, the newspaper, the Elfcast podcast that goes out every evening at 6pm – all of that is my domain. Mike and I will brainstorm together, and then I’ll come and sit in my study and work it all out. 

As it’s getting bigger and bigger, not having been a business person, I can find it slightly overwhelming, and I like to come back to the small and the manageable – the things I know I can do. I know what my contribution is, and it’s escaping into my magical, whimsical world.

The way I cope is to focus on the things that I’m good at, where I can add value, because ultimately, the business is going to be better for it. 

I like to be knowledgeable about the business as a whole, as it’s still 100% family owned (we don’t have any investors), but now I choose not to go to things that don’t directly affect me. I’m useless with IT, for example, so I leave that to the folks who know about it. 

I’m a very calm and relaxed person, so I don’t find it hard to de-stress. One of my sons made a speech at my 60th birthday last weekend and said that I’m incredibly present and always have been – no books, no headphones – I have everything I need right here. When it comes to relaxing, I don’t like to do big things; I like to walk the dog and watch TV. 

If I do get overwhelmed, I like to think about the difference we’re making to children’s lives. The very best thing is seeing the impact we’ve had, that we’re actually influencing a generation of childhood belief – it’s an incredible legacy to think that children are believing the Father Christmas myth to be our own unique versions – it’s so beautiful. Also, I know the stressful time is time-dated, so I know by Christmas that I can relax and enjoy myself. If you know there’s an end to it, it helps you cope. 

Last year, we were granted charitable status, and I’m chair of the Lapland foundation, which is hugely important to me. We do the work of Father Christmas, gifting stockings to children who wouldn’t otherwise get one. So far this year, we’ve sent out 3,000 stockings to hospitals and charities, we’re funding local children’s Christmas parties, and generally trying to give a spark of magic back to young people whose lives have been interrupted through no fault of their own. They might be young carers, refugees or perhaps they’re ill or have been bereaved. This is going to be a focus of mine moving forward. 

No matter how old our boys get, they’re always home for Christmas. Every year, I still set out all the stockings and sacks, and we all still stir the love into the Christmas cake – we just carry on as we’ve always done. I’ll try to keep the magic alive for as long as I possibly can.

Lapland UK runs from 13 November to 24 December 2025 at Ascot and Manchester. Tickets are available here.

Images: Luke Dyson