Why do we believe in God and not Father Christmas?

• Few people realize that the origins of a form of Christmas was pagan & celebrated in Europe long before anyone there had heard of Jesus Christ.

• Saturnalia

• In Roman times, the best-known winter festival was Saturnalia, which was popular throughout Italy. Saturnalia was a time of general relaxation, feasting, merry-making, and a cessation of formal rules. It included the making and giving of small presents (Saturnalia et Sigillaricia), including small dolls for children and candles for adults.[6] During Saturnalia, business was postponed and even slaves feasted. There was drinking, gambling, and singing, and even public nudity. It was the "best of days," according to the poet Catullus.[7] Saturnalia honored the god Saturn and began on December 17. The festival gradually lengthened until the late Republican period, when it was seven days (December 17–24). In imperial times, Saturnalia was shortened to five days

• Yule• Pagan Scandinavia celebrated a winter festival called Yule, held in

the late December to early January period. Yule logs were lit to honor Thor, the god of thunder, with the belief that each spark from the fire represented a new pig or calf that would be born during the coming year. Feasting would continue until the log burned out, which could take as many as twelve days.[4] In pagan Germania(not to be confused with Germany), the equivalent holiday was the mid-winter night which was followed by 12 "wild nights", filled with eating, drinking and partying.[12]

• As Northern Europe was the last part to Christianize, its pagan celebrations had a major influence on Christmas. Scandinavians still call Christmas Jul. In English, the Germanic word Yule is synonymous with Christmas,[13] a usage first recorded in 900.

It is also often said that as Hadhrat ‘Isa (Alay Hissalaam) was born at a time when shepherds were abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night, Hadhrat ‘Isa (Alay Hissalaam) could not have been born, later than September. This is because, in Palestine - as in the rest of the Middle East at the time - shepherds stayed with their flocks in the fields only from spring to autumn. They brought their sheep in during the winter to protect them from the cold and rain. It is thus unlikely that the shepherds went to Bethlehem in December. Islamic times

• Early Christian origins

• Saint Nicholas of Myra is the primary inspiration for the Christian figure of Santa Claus. He was a 4th century Christian bishop of Myra in Lycia, a province of the Byzantine Anatolia, now in Turkey. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes. He was very religious from an early age and devoted his life entirely to Christianity. In Europe (more precisely the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Germany) he is still portrayed as a bearded bishop in canonical robes. The relics of St. Nicholas were transported to Bari in southern Italyby some enterprising Italian merchants;[8] a basilicawas constructed in 1087 to house them and the area became a pilgrimage site for the devout. Saint Nicholas became claimed as a patron saint of many diverse groups, from archers and children to pawnbrokers and prostitutes[9]. He is also the patron saint of both Amsterdam and Moscow.

A medieval fresco depicting St Nicholas from the Boyana Church, near Sofia, Bulgaria

• Saint Nick

• Santa Claus is derived from St Nicholas, fourth century Archbishop of Myra, one of Christendom’s most popular saints. Secretly at night he gave bags of gold to the three daughters of a poor man so they would not have to sell their bodies: this deed eventually gave pawnbrokers their 'three gold balls' guild sign and 'Santa Claus' the reputation as a gift-giver.

• Pagan attributes from the Norse god Woden, who rides through the sky with reindeer and forty-two ghostly huntsmen, blended with the saint. He became one, as it were, with the old Yuletide Father Christmas during the Reformation, and was given a nudge along by Clement C Moore’s famous 1822 poem A Visit from St Nicholas(“Twas the night before Christmas...”). Moore, however, had a gnome-like St Nick “dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot”. The Santa we know is a late-nineteenth century creation of Coca-Cola’s ad department. (Moore, by the way, might not be the poem's author.)

Influence of Germanic paganism and folklore

Numerous parallels have been drawn surrounding the figure of Odin, a major god amongst the Germanic Peoples prior to their Christianization. Since many of these elements are unrelated to Christianity, there are numerous theories regarding the pagan origins of various customs of the holiday stemming from areas where the Germanic peoples were Christianized and retained elements of their indigenous traditions, surviving in various forms into modern depictions of Santa Claus.[11]Odin was sometimes recorded, at the native Germanicholiday of Yule, as leading a great hunting party through the sky.[12] Two books from Iceland, the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, describe Odin as riding an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir that could leap great distances, giving rise to comparisons to Santa Claus' reindeer.[13]Odin's appearance was often similar to that of Saint Nicholas, being depicted as an old, mysterious man with a beard. An 1886 depiction of the

indigenous Germanic god Odinby Georg von Rosen.

Image of a man dressed up as Santa Clausholding a sign that reads, "Help the Volunteers of America send Santa down 10,000 chimneys" on the sidewalk of a commercial street in Chicago, Illinois. He is standing next to a chimney with another sign on it. He is wearing a mask with a beard attached. This photonegativetaken by a Chicago Daily Newsphotographer in 1902.

In his book Nicholas: The Epic Journey from Saint to Santa Claus, writer Jeremy Seal describes how the commercialization of the Santa Claus legend began in the 1800s. "In the 1820s he began to acquire the recognizable trappings: reindeer, sleigh, bells," said Seal in an interview. "They are simply the actual bearings in the world from which he emerged. At that time, sleighs were how you got about Manhattan."

• “Our jolly old Saint Nicholas reflects our culture to a T, for he is fanciful, exuberant, bountiful, over-weight, and highly commercial. He also mirrors some of our highest ideals: childhood purity and innocence, selfless giving, unfaltering love, justice, and mercy. (What child has ever received a coal for Christmas?) The problem is that, in the process, he has become burdened with some of society's greatest challenges: materialism, corporate greed, and domination by the media. Here, Santa carries more in his baggage than toys alone!”

Detail from First Celebration of the Festival of St. Nicholas by The New-York Historical Society, Broadside by Alexander Anderson, December 6, 1810, commissioned by John Pintard, SY 1864-21, negative number

The jolly elf image received a big boost in 1823, from a poem destined to become immensely popular, "A Visit from St. Nicholas”.

Now known as "The Night Before Christmas."

• He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

• His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

• The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;He had a broad face and a little round belly,That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf. . . .

In 1863, political cartoonist began a series of annual drawings in Harper's Weeklywhich were based on the descriptions found in the poem and Washington Irving's work. These drawings established a rotund Santa with flowing beard, fur garments, and an omnipresent clay pipe. As Nast drew Santas until 1886, his work had considerable influence in forming the American Santa Claus. Along with changes in appearance, the saint's name changed to Santa Claus as a natural phonetic alteration from the German Sankt Niklaus and Dutch .

• The Civil War cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa Claus for Harper's Weekly in 1862; Santa was shown as a small elf-like figure who supported the Union. Nast continued to draw Santa for 30 years and along the way changed the color of his coat from tan to the now traditional red. Though some people believe the Coca-Cola Santa wears red because that is the Coke® color, the red suit comes from Nast's interpretation of St. Nick.

The Coca-Cola Company began its Christmas advertising in the 1920s with shopping-related ads in magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. The first Santa ads used a strict-looking Claus, in the vein of Thomas Nast.

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• In past centuries, Christmas-related controversy was mainly restricted to concerns of a public focus on secular Christmas themes such as Santa Claus and gift giving rather than what was glorified as the "reason for the season"—the birth of Jesus. A symbolic issue from these past controversies was usage of the term "Xmas", which many allege is a conscious attempt at removing the term "Christ" from Christmas. The abbreviation originated from the use of the Greek letter chi, Χ, as an abbreviation of Christ (Χριστός).

• Santa as a lie told to children• The editors of Netscape framed one of the common

complaints about the Santa Claus myth: "Parents who encourage a belief in Santa are foisting a grand deception on their children, who inevitably will be disappointed and disillusioned.“ In an AP-AOL News poll, 86% of American adults believed in Santa as children, with the age of 8 being the average for learning that he is not real, although 15% still believed after the age of 10. In New Zealand, 85 percent of 4-year-old children and 65 percent of 6-year-olds believe in Santa Claus.

• “The objections to the lie are that it is unethical for parents to lie to children without good cause, and that it discourages healthy skepticism in children. With no greater good at the heart of the lie, it is charged that it is more about the parents than it is about the children. Writer Austin Cline posed the question: "Is it not possible that kids would find at least as much pleasure in knowing that parents are responsible for Christmas, not a supernatural stranger?"

• The Greek Orthodox Church, like the Christian Church, celebrates the birth of Christ on December 25. That date was picked because on the same day in the Mediterranean area they used to celebrate a Persian god, Mithras, who was the god of the Sun. And, because the difference between light and darkness is such an important aspect of the December month, all our Greek traditions and customs are still based on that contrast of darkness and light.

According to Church records, Saint Boniface (who, also according to Church records, had felled the Thor's Oak) attempted to Christianise the indigenous Germanic tribes by introducing the notion of trinity by using the cone-shaped evergreen trees because of their triangular appearance.

Traditionally, Christmas trees were not brought in and decorated until Christmas Eve (24 December), and then removed the day after twelfth night (6 January); to have a tree up before or after these dates was even considered bad luck. Modern commercialisation of Christmas has resulted in trees being put up much earlier; in shops often as early as late October (in the UK, Selfridge's Christmas department is up by early September, complete with Christmas trees).

• Greeks are increasingly turning to decorating small Christmas boats instead of trees, considered an imported tradition, in the mistaken belief they are reviving an old Greek custom.

• “We are slowly abandoning Christmas trees, which are considered a foreign custom, and turning to ships instead,” said Erika Vallianou, a journalist from the western island of Cephalonia.The Christmas boats are made of paper or wood, decorated with small, colorful lamps and a few, simple ornaments. They are usually placed near the outer door or by the fire and the bow should always point to the interior of the house. With golden objects or coins placed in it, the ship symbolizes a full load of riches reaching one’s home. And the Christmas boat is making inroads into mainland Greece.

• Christmas around the world

• Syncretism consists of the attempt to reconcile disparate or contradictory beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term may refer to attempts to merge and analogize several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an underlying unity allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths.

• Syncretism also occurs commonly in literature, music, the representational arts and other expressions of culture. (Compare the concept of eclecticism.) Syncretism may occur in architecture as well. There also exist syncretic politics, although in political classification the term has a somewhat different meaning.

• The Orisha:

• Santeria includes the worship of the Orisha -- literally "head guardians," and religious beliefs of the Yoruba and Bantu people in Southern Nigeria, Senegal and Guinea Coast. These are combined with elements of Roman Catholicism.

• Arriving as slaves In the Caribbean, Santerians preserved the elements of their religion by equating each Orisha of their traditional religions with a corresponding Christian Saint. Many traditions within the religion recognize different equivalencies. One common example includes:

• Influence of Catholicism• The Roman Catholic element in Santeria is most obvious in the way

Orishas are associated with Catholic Saints such as:• Saint Barbara [Shangó], who embodies justice and strength, and is

associated with lightning and fire • Our Lady of Charity [Ochún] - the Yoruba goddess of the river,

associated with water, yellow, sweets, money, and love • Saint Lazarus [Babalú-Ayé] - who is associated with the sick

• Santeria incorporates elements of several faiths and so is what's called a 'syncretic' religion. It has grown beyond its Yoruba and Catholic origins to become a religion in its own right, and a powerful symbol of the religious creativity of Afro-Cuban culture.

• The centre of the religion is Cuba, but it has spread to the USA and other nearby countries, particularly after the Cuban revolution in 1959.

• For a long time Santeria was a secretive underground religion, but it's becoming increasingly visible in the Americas:

• Once dismissed as a ghetto religion practiced only by the Caribbean poor and uneducated, Santeria has a growing following among middle-class professionals, including white, black and Asian Americans.

• There are police officers in New York who pray to Obatala, the father of all deities, or orishas, before they slip on their gun belts.

• There are lawyers and professors, civil servants and musicians whose homes are filled with altars laden with flowers, rum, cake and cigars to keep the gods happy and helpful. Many dress in white to symbolize purity.