subject: Santa Claus - Santa Claus - Where Are You From [print this page] Dressed in red-bellied men hanging from building facades. Santa Claus has arrived. Where he comes from but this fellow? Where does he live? Every year around Christmas starts again the contest "Santa Claus contrasting Christ Child". Similar proportions religious war he takes sometimes. Where it comes from really, the big-bellied good looking red-clad old man with his "Ho-ho-ho"? From America and really connected with Coca Cola? Where his true roots are buried? Pope Gregory declared in the year 354 25 Dec. official birthday of Jesus. Thus the pagan custom of the winter solstice was converted to a Christian festival.
The Santa Claus legend got to the bottom
Presenting the back is certainly the figure of Saint Nicholas. The holy Bishop Nicholas of Myra , active around 300 AD in Asia Minor was part of the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, on his special day, the 6th Celebrated in December and he brought gifts for children. Its distribution took place primarily in Orthodox Russia. In medieval times, the saint was also very popular in Western Christendom.
The Christ child, as the bringer of gifts, however, was introduced by Martin Luther and it is surprising that the figure of the infant Jesus has taken particularly strong in the Catholic areas of solid foot than anywhere else.
The cornerstone of the world-embracing " Santa Claus "- success story , however, put the Dutch West India Company. Dutch immigrants brought with her emigration with not only the preference for tea and biscuits, but also the custom of their Sinterklaas (Santa Claus). St. Nicholas was also the same way, the patron saint of New Amsterdam, from 07 September 1664 better known as New York.
In Protestant areas were avoided to the significant references to the strongly Catholic Bishop Nicholas and chose instead Mitra a hat, coat and boots are from the Bogeyman. Father Christmas was originally a mixture of Nicholas (Santa Claus) and Ruprecht (assistant to the Christ child) as an incarnation of the principles of gifting and punishment at the same time.
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From Siberia: In Siberia some tribes revered the great "Reindeer Spirit." Shaman who received hallucinogenic mushrooms in a ritual floated in their dreams intoxicated by the drain hole (chimney) of the dwellings in the world of reindeer spirits and brought from there dances, stories and songs (gifts). 1917, under the communists, the religious symbols are banned, so you go back to the old legends. From the Germanic: Odin or Wodan led during the "Twelve Nights" - the period between Christmas and the Epiphany (January 6) - to the souls of the dead on a wild ride through the countryside.
First pictorial representation of Santa Claus
1847, the non-religious-prone Santa Claus, Mr. Winter, a drawing by Moritz and was shown as a portly old man with a beard and long hooded cloak. That the Coca-Cola Company, from 1931 every year at Christmas time the appearance of the red-faced old man with a white beard used for their own campaigns, and whether the company is so crucial to the global spread of the "Santa Claus" helped is debatable. The fact is that the retired Lou Prentice, a model for the cozy Santa Claus figure stood.
Father Christmas or Santa Claus is so consequently neither pagan traditions still calculated invention of commerce, but the revitalization and mixing the Christian figure of Saint Nicholas with his wild, popular companions.
Santa and eight reindeer
In 1822 the eight reindeer are writing a poem, but with the title mentioned "Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement Moore, a professor of East Asian languages. In 1886, on a picture in Harper's Magazine first appeared on a reindeer sleigh. From Nicholas soon became Santa Claus.
Famous worldwide, the story of Rudolph, with its history resembles already back to a legend: the poor poet, the enchanting story of " Rudolph, The Rednosed Reindeer invents "for his child and (financial) for his rights and the glory laboriously must fight . In 1938, Robert Lewis May's wife Evelyn is dying with cancer. To donate his then four-year-old daughter Barbara consolation, he tells her a story every night about a little reindeer with a red nose. Will achieve this story once fame, knowing neither he nor his child. Thus came to the aforementioned Moore's eight reindeer - Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen, Rudolph also as leader to do so.
