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

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (57828)	12/27/2000 8:26:53 AM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

I don't see that his Turkish origin has anything to do with anything. The real Nick was just the figure on which the Church decided to hang its Santa hat. He then began to take on as many aspects and characteristics as necessary or desired. The reason he's associated with Thor and Odin is, according to this, and I have no idea who the author is, some pagan friend of Peikoff, I'm sure, In the northern European countries, modern Scandinavia, St. Nicholas was not at first given the same warm reception. The people here had their own pagan gods to protect them during the long, cold winter nights. One of these god's who was a sky god and at mid-winter, the sky god came down to earth, kissed the horizon and started off the process for the birth of Spring, the rebirth of the new year and the animals would be born, the fruit would start to grow, the little crops from beginning agriculture would start to come up several months later. So this was a really crucial moment, a pivotal moment in the turning of the year, when the sky god coming down to the earth. Later came the northern god Odin, who had a character for every month of the year. His kindly December character, Yulekatid, left money for the poor. People used to say that when the winter clouds scudded across the sky, it was Odin flying across the sky on his white horse, and he used to come to earth dressed in a long, hooded cloak, with a bag of coins, bread, to give to people who were poor, in his winter guise. Around the same time, we had the Saxons who gave everyone and everything, personifications. So the weather, the elements, they all has personifications: Father Ice, King Frost, King Winter. They were all welcomed into the halls of the Saxon thanes because they believed that by welcoming them, they would be less harsh. The Saxons' tradition of mid-winter gods and festivals to honour them became widely accepted in Britain, but a clash between this pagan religion and emerging Christianity produced new mid-winter figure: Father Christmas, character part pagan, part Christian. Father Christmas came from the old northern traditions of Odin and the personification of winter, which in the Middle Ages had come into a melting-pot together with St. Nicholas, and the parishes in the Middle Ages used to send out a man, either an actor or someone from outside the parish who wasn't known in the parish, and he would be dressed in a long cloak and he would go around the houses to each family in the parish saying 'is all well?' and leaving something for the children. The Church, believed it needed to replace the misguided ways of the indigenous peoples and they went about it in a very organised manner. Pope Julius set the official date of Jesus's birth at the height of the pagan mid-winter festivals, and that just shows us how important it was to the Christian missionaries, to try to replace the Odin figure. They also came up with Bishop Nicholas, who was put forward as the figure who would represent the Christian Christmas and would replace this figure of Odin. And in fact they asked people, to dress up as St. Nicholas.