Journal Ethelred Unraed's Journal: Santa too fat? We'll fix that 6
bettiwettiwoo writes that Santa may be too fat.
Ethelred has (is?) the solution.
You see, a couple weeks ago for St. Nicholas' Day (which is still celebrated with the "original" St. Nick in much of Germany on 6 December) I got drafted into playing said bishop.
Go ahead and laugh at my expense. Our priest certainly did.
Anyway, some nifty background: St. Nicholas of Myra was a much-loved bishop in the early Church, who became known for his kindness and generosity. To give you an idea of how loved and respected he was, take a look at this icon of St. Nicholas. Notice the pose? This is called the "teacher" pose. Only one other guy is portrayed that way. You got it, this guy.
So St. Nicholas' feast day on 6 December became a day of celebration and gifts, while Christmas itself generally was not an occasion of gift-giving. (This is still the situation in the Netherlands, where St. Nicholas -- or "Sinterklaas" in Dutch -- is still recognizably a bishop and there is no gift-giving on Christmas.) The Dutch took Sinterklaas with them to a colony called Nieuw Amsterdam, which we know today as New York. As New York came under the influence of Protestant New England (along with more radical Protestants from the Netherlands), and Protestants generally take a dim view of hagiography, Sinterklaas was moved from 6 December to 25 December, was mixed up with Father Christmas, and became a Christmas figure instead. Over time the name got mangled from "Sinterklaas" to "Santa Claus".
Meanwhile in 1823, a certain beloved poem came out, which laid down the basics of the modern Santa Claus legend. (Interesting to note he's still called "St. Nicholas" or "St. Nick" in the poem, not "Santa Claus".)
To add to the oddity, Santa Claus later (thanks at least in part to Hollywood) got re-exported back to Ye Olde Country in Germany, where the gift-giving person in Protestant areas was the Christ child ("das Christkind"). So nowadays in Germany there's a guy called, somewhat daftly, der Weihnachtsmann (literally "the Christmas man"), who will look quite familiar to Americans. So in some parts of Germany, you have the original St. Nicholas on 6 December, followed by the mashed-up re-imported version on 25 December (or 24 December, since many -- most? -- Germans exchange presents on the evening of Christmas Eve).
Image needs a description (Score:2)
Or maybe just a little "thought bubble". Maybe something like "Gather around me, my little minions"
That Beard ... (Score:2)
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That's what you think. The rabbit wasn't dead.
In fact, it was the Rabbit of Caerbannog [wikipedia.org], which I managed to defeat while entertaining the children.
Cheers,
Ethelred
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merry christmas to you and BoE and the CoE (children of Ethelred).
You make a lovely Sinterklaas (Score:1)
Of course, I knew all the stuff you just wrote down, but hey.... Sinterklaas is part of my cultural heritage. Luckily there isn't all that much difference in Luxemburg, except that the sidekick is different.
The Luxembourgish version, "Kleesjen", has a scary man as a sidekick "Den Housécker" (or in French: "Père Fouetard"), and the Dutch version has a whole army of sidekicks called "Zwarte Pieten" which are essentially black servants. (But we don't care about political correctness anound here!)