 |
|
Like you I enjoy partaking in the Christmas vibe and re-enacting some old pagan rituals that have been incorporated into this festive season. For those of you out there who have young family members that still believe in Santa, or if you just want to send someone an elaborate card you can go to http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/home and give someone the gift of a message from Santa.
It has some neat features and even different style messages for children or adults. You can even report the person as Naughty or Nice. Overall it's a very cute way to surprise people for Christmas.
Things you may not have known about Christmas:
Certain puritanical Christian sects saw Christmas as too paganistic. The short term prominence of these groups led to Christmas being banned in England for nearly 10 years and banned in Boston for almost 20. In some other areas of New England a person could be fined 5 shillings for wishing someone a merry Christmas in public on a day that wasn't Christmas.
The term X-mas comes from Greece where Christ was replaced with Xristos and they began shortening the term to X-mas.
Santa was not traditionally clothed in red with white trim until Coca Cola clothed him in the company's colors for an ad campaign.
Famed science fiction author Arthur C Clarke wrote a short sci-fi story that depressingly relates to Christmas called "The Star" and later published as "Star of Bethlehem." While it is a bit depressing it is still a very well written story and worth a read.
NORAD started tracking Santa because in their original department title CONAD workers on Christmas Eve kept Christmas alive for children in response to a fluke typo. During the 50's Sears was running an ad where children could call and talk to Santa. In error they printed CONAD's number. As numerous children called the line on Christmas eve to find out where Santa was the Colonel in charge realized what was happening and had his team "check the radar" to see where Santa might be, and they informed the children. Since then it has been a Christmas Eve tradition that lasted even after CONAD became NORAD. You and your children can track Santa together at NORAD's dedicated site: http://www.noradsanta.org/en/
Merry X-mas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year. More rants will return starting in January.
/rant
blog comments powered by Disqus
