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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (57815)	12/27/2000 12:51:05 AM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

ANd more!! Odin, Thor and Santa are brothers! It is well known that the name "Santa Claus" comes to us by way of the Dutch "Sinter Klaas," which in turn, was a form of Saint Nicholas. Our modern Santa Claus took his name from the Christian Saint Nicholas so we need to begin with a look at this Christian bishop of the fourth century. Throughout history Nicholas of Myra (d. 350) has been one of the most beloved saints even apart from the Santa Claus context. ... Ironically, very little factual information is actually known about this most popular saint. .... The Feast of St. Nicholas on Dec. 6 has been observed with great enthusiasm throughout Medieval Europe over the centuries. This enthusiasm was due to the many legends that had grown up around Nicholas: that he had distributed gifts to the poor at night through their windows, had fasted while a baby, had helped dowerless maidens, saved a city from famine, had aided a ship in distress, etc.3 Because of the gift-giving legends associated with Nicholas, it was held (especially in Belgium and Holland) that on the Eve the Feast of Nicholas, the bishop himself would come from heaven and visit children in their homes, giving gifts to those who had been good. Nicholas, decked out in full ecclesiastical garb (bishop's vestments, with miter and crozier), would arrive on a flying gray horse (or white donkey, depending on the custom). In some variations of the legend, he was accompanied by Black Peter, an elf whose job was to punish children who had been bad. It is held by some scholars that the legends of Nicholas as gift-giver drew in part from pagan, preChristian sources. For example, the Teutonic god of the air, Odin, would ride through the air on a gray horse (named Sleipnir) each Autumn - so did Nicholas; Odin had a long white beard - so did Nicholas; a sheaf of grain was left in the field for Odin's horse - children left a wisp of straw in their shoes for Nicholas.4 Others claim that attributes of the Germanic god Thor, the god of thunder, were transferred to Nicholas. Thor was supposedly elderly and heavy with a long white beard; he road through the air in a chariot drawn by two white goats (called Cracker and Gnasher); he dressed in red; his palace was in the "northland;" he was friendly and cheerful; he would come down the chimney into his element, the fire.5 No definitive correlation has ever been found between the "visit of St. Nicholas" and pagan gods such as Odin and Thor. However the similarity is striking and some relationship seems likely.6

To: epicure who wrote (57815)	12/27/2000 2:00:54 AM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

There recently was a school of historians who were telling us that childhood is a recent invention. They said that parents in the past treated their children as little adults. They didn't fawn on them. Didn't dote on them. They had no special feeling for their children. They made them work. Now, only an academic could believe this horsecrap. Those with common sense could smell academic idiocy right from the start. Since the time this stupid idea was floated plenty of historians have shown that this wasn't true at all. Parents in the past felt just as much for their children as parents today. Maybe more, in fact, because it hasn't been all that many years that children could be expected to live to become adults. This article you cite sounds like it's made of the same stuff. No eighteenth-century sources highlight the importance of children at Christmastime--or of Christmas to children in particular Big deal. She's making an argument from silence. It's lousy logic. But at least your source mentioned evergreens. And gift giving (that from stores; it's likely that many gifts would be home made in the colonial era, and wouldn't show in the advertisements she cites. Like gifts made by children to give to their parents). The first written reference to a Christmas tree dates from the seventeenth century when a candle-lighted tree astonished residents of Strasbourg Someone needs to inform this oaf that Luther wrote of Christmas trees a few hundred years before. But enough. I'm not impressed. Except that she does confirm my assertion that Santa is an amalgam of older sources, including the Dutch Father Christmas. Hardly the pure invention by Moore in the 1800s as claimed by the bufoonish Piekoff.