St. Nick

As the story goes, Jolly ol’ Saint Nicholas was a royal boy from Myra in the country of Turkey. He was a 4th century bishop who became famous when he heard the story of three Italian maidens whose families had fallen on hard times. His father couldn’t afford for the three of them to marry, so he was considering selling one of the daughters into slavery to pay for the wedding of the other two. Well, as you can imagine, that’s a pretty bad deal for anyone and St. Nick decided to help the family out. One night he snuck onto her roof and secretly threw three bags of gold down the chimney. With his gift, the three daughters were able to marry and his generosity became famous. He became the patron saint of children, orphans, sailors, students, moneylenders, thieves, and the countries of Russia and Greece.

SANTA HAS A NEW BAG

Over time the legend of Saint Nicholas grew and the feast of Saint Nicholas was celebrated on December 6, the day of his death. Saint Nicholas’s eternal retirement as Santa Claus evolved over several centuries as the legend of Saint Nicholas spread to neighboring countries. Dutch and German settlers brought the basic ideas of what Santa Claus would be like to the New World. The Dutch had Sinterklaas and the Germans had Pelsnickel and Christkindl and they both celebrated the feast of Saint Nicholas. The idea of ​​naughty and nice seems to come from Pelsnickel would bring rewards to the good and punishment to the bad. The Dutch version of Santa Claus lived in Spain, rode a white horse and traveled with six or eight black men who helped him deliver gifts. Over the centuries this slowly changed to characters that were much more politically correct. The men became Telatubby-type rainbow-colored helpers. This was combined with the Scandinavian Christmas tradition of gifting to elves and, voila, Santa now had a legion of elves who build toys to bring joy to the world.

The modern version of Santa Claus quickly took shape with American writers during the Christmas season.

In 1808, Washington Irving created the idea of ​​a pipe-smoking Santa Claus in a wide-brimmed hat riding over the treetops in a horse-drawn wagon pulling presents down the chimneys to all his favorite children.

In 1822, Dr. Clement Clark Moore made the most lasting impression on the jolly old man with his story, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known as “The Night Before Christmas.” He established that Santa lived in the Arctic with a flying sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. He described Santa as having “a wide face and a small round belly, which he quivered when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly”.

Thomas Nast illustrated covers for Harper’s Weekly in the late 19th century and, at the request of President Lincoln, was commissioned to create a special Christmas image for the cover. This started an annual tradition for Nast, who took the opportunity to mold Santa to his liking. Nast created the standard Santa suit, his home at the North Pole, and the image of him pouring out a list of bad guys or good guys.

In 1850, Nast’s new version of Santa began to appear in American department stores. The image of Santa evolved with each new Christmas season. The modern image of Santa Claus was firmly solidified by artist Haddon Sundblom in 1931, when he created an annual Santa Claus campaign for Coca-Cola.

RUDOLP

In 1939, Robert May, a copywriter for Montgomery Ward department store, came up with the marketing idea for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Montgomery Ward distributed 2.4 million copies of the story booklet in its first year of release. May had suffered considerable financial problems, his wife had died of a terminal illness, and in 1947 the department store gave him the Rudolph copyright. May’s brother-in-law soon after wrote the lyrics for the song, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. Gene Autry was the first to record the song in 1949 and it became the second best-selling song of all time, second only to ‘White Christmas’. The famous Rudolph Christmas special was created in 1964 and remains a classic to this day.

WE THREE KINGS

Gold, frankincense and myrrh – precious metals and gum resins, that’s what the three wise men brought to the baby Jesus on his birthday. These were rare and special gifts, things you couldn’t normally get your hands on, especially if you were a baby, even if your father was the creator of the known universe. Everybody knows what gold is and I’m guessing the guy who brought it in was a town favorite, so what about frankincense and myrrh? Frankincense is hardened tree sap from the Boswelia tree. Myrrh is also hardened tree sap from the Miphora family of trees. Both are used as incense and are commonly found in the country of Somalia.

An interesting note, nothing in the Bible says how many wise men came with gifts. Gaspar, Melchior and Baltasar are often called by the names of the wise men, but these names do not appear in the Bible either. The number three refers to the three types of gifts presented. There is also no mention of the sages riding camels or being kings. There is more evidence that the men appeared sometime after the actual birth as the source of information says in Matthew 2:11: “And when they entered the house, they say the child was with Mary his mother, and they fell down and adored him …EUR¦” Hmmm, it seems that at that time Mary had a home and Jesus was a little boy, rather than a baby in a stable.

SOCK STUFFING

The original idea for stocking stuffer came from children leaving carrots and turnips in their shoes for Santa’s horse or donkey, long before he was known to have reindeer. A grateful Santa Claus would take the snacks instead and replace them with treats for the children who gave them away.

CONFASTED CANE

The red and white striped Christmas pacifier has been around for several centuries. Parents have long been giving their children sticks of white sugar to keep their barks shut, then in the 1670s an industrious German choirmaster bent the sticks to look like a shepherd’s staff. With its somewhat sacred interpretation, as Jesus was the Good Shepherd, and its convenient hook shape for hanging on tree branches, candy became a favorite Christmas tree decoration. When flipped over, the hook is a large “J”, an appropriate symbol for the Big J.

Over time, the candy took on its familiar peppermint flavor and stripes. Mint is similar to hyssop, which was used for ancient purification and sacrificial rituals. The traditional candy cane has three small red stripes and one large one. The most common interpretation says that the three small ones represent the Holy Trinity and the largest one reminds us of God. Another version states that the three small stripes represent our own sins while the largest one symbolizes the Passion of Christ. Green is the color of giving and sometimes a green stripe is added to represent that Jesus is God’s gift to us.

KISSING FACE

By definition, mistletoe is an evergreen aerial parasitic plant that has no roots of its own and lives off the tree to which it attaches. Doesn’t sound so romantic right?

Well, centuries ago, the Druids respected mistletoe as a sacred plant with spiritual and medicinal healing qualities. There was much fanfare in harvesting the plant and they used a special gold dagger to harvest it. A Norse myth tells the story of Balder, the god of light, who was felled by an arrow crafted from a branch of mistletoe. The earth and the sky mourned his death and for three days each element tried in vain to bring Balder back to life. It was his mother, Frigga, who restored, but not before his fallen tears turned into the white berries of mistletoe. From then on she decreed that no one would suffer any harm under the mistletoe and that they would only receive a kiss of love.

CHRISTMAS TREE

In the 4th century AD, the Roman Church decided that Christmas should be officially celebrated on December 25. In doing this, some of the pagan customs of the Roman Saturnalia were absorbed, since it was celebrated at that same time of year. During Saturnalia, people feasted, exchanged gifts, and decorated their homes with lamps and evergreen bushes. Food and gifts were fine for the Church, but evergreen things were too pagan for them because they were forbidden. For centuries the battle for the festive decoration of the home raged. In the 16th century, John Calvin outlawed the celebration of Christmas and Easter, and by 1659 it was illegal in Massachusetts to celebrate Christmas anywhere other than church. It was not fully accepted until the mid-19th century by Prince Albert of England, which allowed Christmas and home decoration with Christmas trees to become fully accepted.

Nowadays, almost everyone is in the habit of having a Christmas tree in their homes, regardless of their strong religious affiliations. 2004 marks the 72nd annual lighting of the Rockefeller Christmas tree.

ROCKEFELLER CENTER

The annual Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center is usually a Norway spruce. They typically have a lifespan of 80 to 110 years and grow about a foot per year. The desired dimensions are a minimum of 65 feet high and 35 feet wide. 75 to 100 feet tall are preferred. The trees are located in the northeastern part of the United States. It takes two minutes to cut it down, 20 people and a 280-ton all-terrain hydraulic crane are required to handle the tree. Once in place, it is transported via custom-built telescopic flatbed truck to New York City.

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS

After centuries of repression, Christmas became a legal holiday in 1859 in the state of Massachusetts. The rest of the United States soon followed, and in 1882 Thomas Edison came up with the idea for electric Christmas lights. By 1912, outdoor Christmas tree lights had become common in Boston. After World War I, the lights were turned on in Europe, and by the mid-20th century, they became widespread and a well-established part of Christmas cheer. These days is the inciting time that marks the Christmas season with the sight of the first Christmas lights of the year.

CELEBRITY CHRISTMAS

Here’s the scene, a reenactment of the nativity starring Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, and Graham Norton as shepherds, David and Victoria Beckham as Joseph and Mary, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Duke of Edinburgh, and President George W Bush as the Three Wise Men, Kyle Minogue as the angel, and JC playing himself as a baby. It’s not a movie, but this year’s Madame Tussaud’s celebrity nativity scene is now on display in London. We’ll leave it up to you to find out what’s wrong with that image.