The legends of Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas and Father Christmas from around the world have always been interesting to me. I feel that it is one tradition that most places in the world that celebrate Christmas have kept, yet they have all adapted it to make it their very own tradition. Whether people have a Santa who lives at the North Pole with elves, Saint Nicholas the patron saint of prostitutes and lawyers (nope, no possible jokes there), or Father Christmas, formerly the embodiment of winter itself, we mix and match our mythologies to create the appropriate entity for our very own symbol of Christmas.
It isn't even just country to country differences, families have their own traditions which may not be the same as the other families nearby. In our family, each kid went to sleep on Christmas Eve with a piece of ribbon tied around his or her wrist. Each child had a different color. In the morning, the corpulent chimney diver had not only delivered presents, but had marked each of them with the appropriate color of ribbon. Quite the resourceful fellow, if you ask me.
Even outside of the Santa Claus legend, there are all sorts of holiday (regardless of which holiday we're talking about) traditions that we pick up from various places and make our own. The opening of gifts: Gifts were opened on Christmas morning, but children were allowed to open a single gift before bed on Christmas Eve. Food: With family roots in Texas, dinner on Christmas Eve was often Mexican food, specifically, tamales. We lived in the South for much of my life, so on New Years Day, we had black eyed peas. According to tradition, eating them on January 1st wards off bad luck for the next year. Did we believe it? No, but it is tradition. (The problem with that one is that I hate black eyed peas.)
What about your family? Did you have any special traditions? Since I'm going out of town to visit family (now that we can actually leave the driveway) and may not be around to post anything, post your traditions and talk amongst yourselves. But behave, because Santa Claus isn't the only one watching.
Until later...
December 09, 2005
Wait a Minute, Saint Nicholas Would Kick You?
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4 comments:
The wrist ribbon is a cute idea, we might have to adopt that.
No interesting traditions to report, sadly.
Mostly our traditions revolve around consuming copious amounts of Baileys. Oh and watching A Christmas Story after dinner.
Not being Christian or raised Christian, either, we would get to open one gift on Winter Solstice and the rest of Christmas Eve (simply because "everyone else" celebrated on or near that date. Stocking were opened on Christmas morning before the hordes of relatives arrived.
On New Year's Eve we always had cheese fondue because my parents got a fondue pot as a wedding gift (and they're still using it 33 years later) and decided that they needed to use it at least once a year. And now that my sister and I no longer live at home, we continue the fondue tradition with our own families and friends.
My mother is 100% Swedish, so on Christmas Eve she puts together, to the best of her ability, a true Swedish Smorgasbord. However, growing up in the culturally restricted south, this consisted mainly of her Swedish meatball recipe, rice pudding, lingonberries, and anything the grocery store had in stock indicating that it originated in Sweden, like "Swedish Rye Bread" or "Swedish Mince Meat" or "Swedish Nutmeg Yams." Seriously, the year we had "Swedish Canned Anchovies" I thought she'd flipped.
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