You are partially right about this. I purchased mine factory sealed from a Toys R Us in Yuma, AZ for like $5 a long time ago. But it's definitely not an "official" US version, as mine has more purple and white in the "Game Boy Advance" lettering on the front of the box. Since I don't have mine readily available right now, I think it had the game description on the back in English and French...

 

Yeah, I'll grab a pic in the next few days

I've actually seen some box arts with the USA banner, like this:



Most likely it was never released, as I've never seen any of these.

I don't recall there ever being an official holiday themed game on any Nintendo console in North America. I think it has to do with NOA's strict policy towards religious imagery in games. I'm not talking of casual reference to Christmas holiday, like the Christmas trees in Animal Crossing, but an actual Christmas themed game. Maybe some crappy Wiiware or something, but I've never seen a Christmas themed retail game on a retro console. And no, special homebrew carts like Bunnyboy's annual 8-bit Xmas or Stella's Stocking for the 2600 don't count.

Are there any officially liscensed N.A. Christmas-themed games in existance prior to DS and Wii? I've not heard of any, but I'd love to be proved wrong.

There are sevral christmas based games on the DS and Advance probably some on the GBC and GB.

Santa Clause 3 The Escape Clause
Elf, the movie
The Grinch
Elf Bowling (christmas seasonal sports)

And a few more that I am probably missing

 

Here's the one I picked up at Toys R Us. Sorry it took so long.

That's definitely a non-US box. I'll double check to see if I can find more info on this.

 

BUMP. This game was planned for USA but was canceled. I've purchased a copy from Amazon and also received a European version. I've been keeping my eye out for a USA version everywhere, but it's never popped up. There's only European version copies on eBay and historical eBay listings. Dain, if this is enough evidence for you, I recommend to remove (or mark as 'Canceled' ) this game in the NA database.

http://nintendoage.com/index.cfm?...

If it was released, it is extraordinarily rare. Because I've been keeping my eye out for it, and it's never popped up.

Some of these Telegames games are incredibly hard to find. I know when I was completing my GBC collection, the Telegames items were super tough. I've changed it to Licensed, Unreleased. If one pops up, we'll change it back.

 

Yeah I don't know. I wound up with a big chunk of your old GBC collection, so didn't have to worry about finding most of the Telegames titles for GBC

I imagine that Telegames only had European version copies made of Santa Claus Saves The Earth (for whatever reason), then had them imported to USA, and had their American vendors distribute the European version. No idea why they would do this, but there are many US vendors selling copies on Amazon and eBay. It's a cheap title, but whenever you order one, you always get the European version, as OP has stated.

This game was CERTAINLY planned to have a US version. It even went so far to have a boxart design made, and it seems to have been assigned a USA product code, a UPC, and ESRB rating. Despite all this, all evidence seems to point that the US version was never produced and was Canceled.

My findings agree with OP - that the USA North American version of this game does not exist.