Christmas Article

Every year, on the eve of the Christmas and New Year holidays, the media make efforts to
revive long-dead household practices. TV channels, newspapers and radio stations report that
"on this day the sacrificial Christmas pig is slaughtered in every home" and that "the owner
cuts a thick pear stump (Christmas tree), which is lit in the evening in the hearth and burns all
night", how on the table should have seven, nine or eleven lean dishes and necessarily a head
of garlic, honey, etc.

The beginning of Christmas

The first Christians did not celebrate Christmas. The feast of the Nativity of Christ gradually
entered the Christian calendar in the IV century, when Pope Julius I ordered to be celebrated
"in honor of the Son of God" on December 25. Rome is the historical prototype of the
Christmas and New Year euphoria. The word Christmas itself comes from the Roman
calendula (Calendae) - the first days of the month. They called them tristes Calendae (sad
calendars) because interest was paid then. When they could not pay them, they said that this
would happen ad Calendas Graecas (in Greek calendars) in a cuckoo summer, because the
Greeks had no calendars. That's where the calendar came from.

Santa Claus

Recently, a friend shared how his son asked him what Santa's ethnicity was and he couldn't
answer. He thought he was a Lapland, but he wasn't sure. Then it occurred to him that he was
a globalist working for multinational companies, but chose to save himself the extra children's
issues. The question of the origin of Santa Claus has a very specific answer. He is an
american. The Anglo-Saxon Santa Claus is actually St. Nicholas, whom the children believed
brought gifts. In the 19th century, the image of the saint was gradually developed and
disguised to transform into a completely new hero. In 1822, Clement Clark Moore, a New
Yorker of Dutch descent, published a series of tales about Santa Claus arriving in a sleigh
pulled by eight reindeer and entering houses through windows. Twenty years later, a merchant
from Philadelphia dressed the first living Santa Claus to attract customers. In the following
decades, through poems, postcards and drawings, the old man gradually acquired a finished
look - with a red suit, white beard and good-natured appearance. His residence outside the
holiday season - at the North Pole - was also located. The global invasion of this new myth
began after 1931, when Coca-Cola introduced the image into its advertising strategy. It turned
out that Santa sells very well.