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Christmas

Christmas is the festival celebrating the birth of Christ and is observed in most countries on December 25. Christmas is sometimes called Yule (from the Anglo-Saxon) or Noel (from the French). Christian churches throughout the world hold special services on Christmas Day to give thanks for the birth of Christ.

In addition to religious observances, Christmas is a time of merrymaking and feasting. North American customs are a combination of those of the various European countries from which the original settlers came. On Christmas Eve children hang stockings for Santa Claus to fill with gifts. The Christmas tree, usually an evergreen, was first used in Germany. Topped with a star or spire and decorated with colored lights and shiny ornaments, the tree plays an important part in the celebration.

Mistletoe was sacred to the Druids, priests of ancient Britain and Gaul. The Norse used holly and the Yule log to keep away evil spirits. Gifts were exchanged during the Roman celebration of the Saturnalia, a feast to the god Saturn. Gift-giving came to symbolize the gifts brought to the Christ Child by the Magi.

The most popular Christmas legend however, is that of Santa Claus, whose name came from Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children. Many of the qualities that Santa Claus is known for came from Clement C. Moore's poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas."

Sending Your Holiday Greetings You don't have to live close to Rudolph, Ohio, or Wisemen, Ark., in order to be creative with your postmarked Christmas greetings to family and friends. Today, this free service is as simple as addressing and adding postage stamps to your cards, packaging them in a large envelope or box and sending it to the attention of the postmaster at the appropriate community post office. It is thought that the little town of Noel, Mo., was one of the first cities to provide such a service, when, in the 1930s, the postmaster suggested a Christmas postmark for those sending cards and letters from Noel. A decade later, the popular radio and television personality Kate Smith broadcast the story of Noel from her national radio program and the bundles of cards and letters began arriving from all 50 states, Mexico and Canada. Today, thousands of Christmas cards still make their way through the small Noel post office on their way to friends and relatives across the country and across the world.

On Christmas Eve 1822, family tradition has recorded, Moore's wife was roasting turkeys for distribution to the poor of the local parish. Late in the afternoon, discovering that she was short one turkey, she asked Moore to venture into the snowy streets to obtain another. "He called for his sleigh and coachman…and…drove 'downtown' to what is now the Bowery section of New York City, to Jefferson Market to buy a turkey. Several sources relate he composed many of the lines in their present meter while riding in his sleigh; his ears full of the jingle-jingle of the sleigh bells…" When he returned, he brought the needed turkey, plus a Christmas poem composed during his errand. After dinner that evening, Moore read the new verses to his family, to the evident delight of his children.

It's doubtful there has been a more parodied poem in the English language than Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (more popularly known as "The Night Before Christmas").

It’s That Time Of Year Again

Soon we’ll begin shopping for all the gifts we think we’ll need for Christmas. We’ll start to bake dozens of Christmas cookies and candies. We’ll haul out the holly and put up the tree to bring the spirit ‘round. We’ll hang the stockings in anticipation of that jolly old man who will fill them. And some of us will dust off the classic Christmas videos: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, White Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, and everyone’s favorite: the story of a little girl who came to believe in the miracle of Santa Claus.

This Christmas favorite, Miracle on 34th Street, reminds us of the spirit of Santa Claus. Dorey Walker, one of the movie’s main characters, spends years limiting her daughter, Susie’s imagination. It takes a man named Kris Kringle and a miracle to give the little girl back her imagination. Dorey Walker insists that Kris tell her daughter that he’s a fake: "Would you please tell her that you’re not really Santa Claus? That there actually is no such person.” she begs.

Turns out, Mrs. Walker was wrong. He may not be a jolly old man in a red suit with flying reindeer, but the man who ignited the legend of Santa Claus did exist. His name was Nicholas.

The problem with Santa! No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course,we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept),we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal anoint, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short,they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17, 500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

The Story Of Saint Nicholas

Historically, Nicholas is known as Bishop Nicholas of Myra and is revered as Saint Nicholas by Eastern Orthodox, Byzantine Catholics and Roman Catholic Christians. He was born around 271 A.D. in the seaport town of Patara of then Asia Minor in what is now modern-day Turkey. His parents, Theophanes and Nonna, were pious people who were prominent and wealthy and died when Nicholas was a young boy.

Very little is historically certain about Nicholas’s life, but it is known that during the course of his lifetime, he became a monk and the well-known bishop of Myra. He was a godly, kind-hearted man who left the comforts of home at a young age to travel to Palestine and Egypt. It is believed that Nicholas gave away his inheritance to the poor and disheartened. This sharing of his wealth and how he did it made his miracles into the legends that our pop culture celebrates every year.

There lived in the town of Patara a man, once prominent and rich, who fell into extreme poverty. This man had three daughters who were very beautiful. He and his family eventually became deprived of everything; they had neither food to eat nor clothing to wear. He felt forced to turn his home into a brothel and to sell his daughters into the life of prostitution so that by this means he might obtain a livelihood for himself and be able to get food and clothing for his family. Nicholas heard of this man’s despair and took great pity on him. He decided to help this family, but wanted to give his generous alms secretly. So ...

Nicholas took a large sack of gold, went to the man’s house at midnight, threw the sack in the window, and left. In the morning, the man found the sack of gold. He attributed the action to divine providence; he continually thanked his benefactor in his soul and praised God. Nicholas’s generosity provided the much needed dowry, which allowed the man’s oldest daughter to marry. Nicholas decided to do the same for the second daughter. So he went again by night with a sack of gold and delivered the bag through the same window of the house. Upon rising the next morning, the man again found the bag of gold. Astonished, he got to his knees and thanked his Lord. The man was then able to celebrate his second daughter’s wedding. Hoping that his third daughter may also marry, the man set out to learn the identity of his benefactor. He stayed up at night waiting for him to arrive. Nicholas did come a third time. This time, however, he couldn’t throw the bag of gold through the window. Legend has it that the third time Nicholas came, the window was locked, so he went to the roof and threw the bag of gold down the chimney. The bag landed in a stocking that was drying by hanging by the fireplace.

Saint Nicholas died on December 5, between 345 A.D. and 352 A.D. His memory is celebrated on this day each year. He is known to be one of the most popular saints with Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Miracles are performed even today through the intercessions of Saint Nicholas.

From Saint Nicholas to Santa Claus

When the reformation took hold in Europe, the Protestant church took a dim view of saints and opposed their veneration. The idea of Saint Nicholas had vanished in all of the Protestant countries in Europe, except for Holland, where Saint Nicholas was shortened to Sinter Klaus. Other countries developed their own unique holiday gift-giver: Pere Noel in France, Father Christmas in England, Kris Kringle in Germany.

The Dutch’s Sinter Klaus, with his flowing Bishop’s robe and white beard, was said to resemble Saint Nicholas the most. In the 1600s, when the Dutch colonized in New Amsterdam (known to us as New York City), they brought the Christmas traditions and Feast of Saint Nicholas with them to the New World. Sinter Klaus was adopted by the English-Americans. And with the mispronunciation of "Sinter Klaus” our beloved bishop became known as "Santa Claus”.

By 1820, as more and more people began to adopt the tradition of gift giving at Christmas, stores began advertising Christmas shopping. In those days, Santa Claus wasn’t yet the jolly old man. For this transformation, one must thank Clement Clark Moore, an author of scholarly Hebrew work. His six children wanted their father to write more creative things that would entertain them. So, on Christmas Eve of 1822, Clement Moore wrote the much-loved poem "An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas” – better known as "The Night Before Christmas.” The poem depicted St. Nicholas as a jolly old elf that flew from house to house in his miniature sleigh with eight flying reindeer that delivered presents to all good boys and girls on Christmas Eve. It was the first that anyone had described St. Nicholas as jolly and fat. Belief has it that Moore came up with these characters from how Dutch merchants looked in that time period.

By 1840 the new image of Santa Claus started popping up in newspaper advertisements, and a shop in Philadelphia placed the first life-sized model of Santa in front of their store. Other stores in Philadelphia followed suit, even adding a live Santa. It wasn’t until 1881, however, that Santa got the red suit with the white fur and matching cap. He even got Mrs. Claus, some elves and a workshop located at the North Pole. By the early 1900s, celebrating Christmas has become widespread in America, and gift-giving became an important part of the Christmas tradition.

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Miracle on 34th Street Miracle On 34th Street is an irresistible fable that has, for many, become synonymous with celebrating Christmas. The holiday season is in full swing when a cultured gentleman with twinkling eyes, an ample belly and a snowy white beard (Edmund Gwenn) is hired as Macy's department store Santa. He claims his name is Kris Kringle, and soon fills everyone with the Christmas spirit -- except for his boss, Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara), who's raising her daughter Susan (Natalie Wood) to not believe in Santa. But when Kris is declared insane and put on trial, everyone's faith is put to the test as old and young alike face the age-old question: Do you believe in Santa Claus? An Academy Award-winner (1947) for Best Supporting Actor (Gwenn), Best Original Story and Best Screenplay, this timeless tale of faith, love and imagination remains one of the most popular and best-loved holiday films of all time.

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