What Santa Claus Brings to Bad Kids. Santa Claus rarely visits poor children - US scientists. Flowers. bouquet of irises - a rainbow as a gift

One mention of a cheerful man in a red cap immediately brings back memories of a happy childhood, of waiting for a holiday about gifts under the tree and various kinds of goodies. The prototype of Santa and Santa Claus was St. Nicholas, who did not live at all at the North Pole. The image of the New Year's grandfather has been formed for almost 1700 years, and in some countries they even wanted to ban it. In our review, there are very curious facts about the main New Year's grandfather.

1. Saint Nicholas is not from the North Pole at all

St. Nicholas was a Greek bishop who lived in the third - fourth centuries in a warm country - Greece. Anthropologists have recreated his face from a preserved skull and found that St. Nick's nose was broken. This may have led to the frequent depiction of Saint Nicholas with a large potato nose.

2. Santa is a miracle worker

Every year, many Christians celebrate Saint Nicholas Day on December 6, the day Nicholas died. Miracles often happen on this day.

3 Nicholas Was Originally Known As The Bringer Of Gifts

Saint Nicholas was known to bring magical gifts and also became the patron saint of children. According to one of the most famous stories, Nikolay saw three young sisters who were involved in prostitution in order to survive. He secretly brought three sacks of gold to their father (who was heavily indebted) to provide them with a dowry for the wedding.

4. St. Nicholas - the righteous

This story was often told during the Middle Ages, but is virtually unknown today. Nikolay somehow came to the inn, where the owner had recently killed three boys, chopped their bodies into pieces and stuffed barrels with meat to salt them. Nicholas brought the boys back to life.

5. How Saint Nicholas disappeared from Christmas celebrations

As the Protestant Reformation swept across much of central and northern Europe, the popularity of the saints declined sharply. Thus, the symbol of the bringer of gifts disappeared. Soon, in many families and countries, the "baby Jesus" began to play this role.

6. The custom of giving gifts was moved to another day.

When the people began to believe not in St. Nicholas, but in the baby Jesus, the day of congratulations and gifts was moved from December 6 to December 25.

7. Santa's ability to fly and eight reindeer

The Scandinavian god Odin probably influenced the development of the Santa Claus story. Odin flew on the eight-legged horse Sleipnir (it is believed that this is how the myth of Santa's eight reindeer appeared).

8 The Origin Of The Red Santa Suit

One of the main theories about why Santa Claus wears a red suit is that it happened because of Nicholas's religious stance (Nicholas wore the red cloak of an archbishop).

9. The Dutch kept the faith in Santa

While much of Europe abandoned Saint Nicholas in favor of the infant Jesus, the Netherlands retained traditional belief in its own version of the gift-bringing character: Sinterklaas. Dutch settlers later brought this tradition to the United States.

10. Christmas or booze

After the founding of the United States, most families in this country did not like or even celebrate Christmas. This is explained simply - basically the States were founded by English settlers, and in England and the colonies it was customary to celebrate the holiday with a lot of alcohol. Therefore, guests often got drunk and rowdy.

11. St. Nicholas was painted almost as often as the mother of Jesus

Among all religious saints, St. Nicholas (or Santa Claus) was depicted by artists more than any other, except the Virgin Mary.

The image of Santa Claus, which is familiar to everyone today, was first drawn by a cartoonist. Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist in the late 1800s, depicted Kris Kringle wearing a red coat with white fur and quite plump.

13. The legendary Coca-Cola ad

One of the most famous facts about Santa Claus is that thanks to Coca-Cola advertising in 1931, the image of Santa was finally formed into the modern one known to everyone today. It was 84 years ago that Coca-Cola marketers decided to turn the saint into a well-fed, good-natured grandfather, traveling on a reindeer sleigh and making his way through chimneys to houses to bring gifts to children.

14. Countries where the fun tradition of giving gifts is unpopular

There are quite a few countries where Santa Claus is disliked, preferring his characters who bring gifts to him. For example, in the Netherlands, during December, gifts are brought by Sinterklaas, and in southern Germany and northern Austria, Krampus often visits Christmas markets.

It turns out that the images of Santa Claus and the Snow Maiden were formed in the USSR only in the 1930s. The image of Frost has existed since ancient Slavic times, but only in the 19th century in Russia this image was tied to an original "Christmas grandfather" who gives gifts to children. After the revolution, Santa Claus was banned, like Christmas, and again Santa Claus "returned" to the USSR in 1936.

Before the New Year comes, it's time to find out everything.

Image copyright getty Image caption Christmas mail has hundreds of millions of items

If Santa Claus really existed, how could he deliver hundreds of millions of cards and gifts for Christmas and New Year?

The task seems almost impossible, because in one night Santa has to go around hundreds of millions of addresses around the world, where children and adults are eagerly waiting for him. How can science come to his aid? Black holes? Quantum mechanics? Supersonic aircraft? Is it even possible to complete this task in one day?

Theoretically, this is possible, but for this, Santa will have to think creatively, and act decisively.

Firstly, there are actually not as many recipients as it might seem at first glance. According to UNICEF, there are 2.2 billion children in the world. But here it is worth remembering that Santa brings gifts only to those children who have behaved well during the year. Therefore, this number must be immediately halved - and this is according to the most optimistic estimates!

Secondly, many children live under the same roof. If we assume that the average family has two and a half children (and that all children living in the same family behave in the same way - good or bad), then Santa will have to visit a total of 440 million addresses.

In addition, elementary physics comes to his aid. Roger Highfield, author of Physics and Christmas, calculated that if Santa sets out on his journey to meet the Earth's rotation, he can easily double his journey by adding another day to his allotted time.

However, even then it will not be easy for him to cope with such a large-scale task.

Is it real? Here are five possible solutions.

New Year and the speed of light

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Not even a team of nine reindeer can help Santa reach the speed of light.

According to Highfield, a former editor of the New Scientist magazine, in order to have time to deliver all the gifts, Santa will have to move at a speed close to the speed of light.

At a speed of 300,000 km per second, it can circumnavigate our planet seven times in one second.

It remains only to guess, however, what will happen to him during acceleration and deceleration, and also whether he will burn out along with his sleigh and deer when braking in dense layers of the atmosphere.

On the other hand, elves can help him

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption American mail delivers 40% of all mail in the world

The US Postal Service claims to handle 40% of the world's mail and deliver about 158 ​​billion letters and parcels a year - that's about 434 million items a day.

This is already quite close to the 440 million addresses mentioned above. The American Post Office, which employs more than 600,000 people and is equipped with a huge fleet of vehicles, is able to cope with such a task.

Although the elves can help Santa with sorting mail and other organizational chores, Santa Claus himself will still have to deliver gifts to children.

Oddly enough, modern physics still does not exclude such a possibility.

Punctures of space and time

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Punctures of space and time will allow Santa to instantly move around the planet

We are talking about punctures in the fabric of space and time, which science fiction writers constantly mention. Imagine that your house is on one side of a piece of paper and your friend's house is on the other side, with some physical distance between them.

If you fold this piece of paper in half and align the two dots, and then poke a hole through them with a pencil, Santa will save a lot of time moving through such holes.

The theory of relativity comes to the rescue.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Einstein's general theory of relativity may help explain how Santa manages to overcome space and time

Larry Silverberg, professor of aerodynamics at the University of North Carolina in the United States, believes that Santa Claus can manipulate space and time.

He argues that Santa can create a special field in which space, time and light are perceived in a completely different way than in the surrounding normal world.

"Within this field, time flows at its own pace. Santa may have several months to deliver all this mail, but when viewed from the outside, it takes seconds," explains the professor.

...or maybe it's all about quantum mechanics

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Or maybe there are an infinite number of Santa Clauses?

On the other hand, Santa can turn into a quantum and be present at the same time anywhere in the world at any moment.

At least that's what Mexican physicist Daniel Tapia, an associate at the CERN Institute in Geneva, thinks.

"Perhaps Santa Claus can take quantized states - in other words, there can be an infinite number of Santas on our planet at the same time."

According to this theory, each such quantized Santa Claus can give a gift to every child in the world on Christmas Eve, when the children are fast asleep and do not see him. But here the Schrodinger effect, or the observation effect, already comes into play.

If the child wakes up and sees Santa Claus, the quantized state of the wizard will be broken, and all the infinite number of Santas will disappear into thin air.

Therefore, children, sleep soundly on Christmas night!

As we all know, Santa Claus is the main character of Christmas. He gives gifts to children. But why exactly him? I repeatedly came across information that Coca Cola was to blame for everything, which in 1931 made Santa the face of its advertising campaign in order to increase the sale of drinks during the pre-holiday period (soda sold worse in winter).

But, I must say, the American artist Haddon Hubbard Sundblom, who worked on the Coca Cola advertising campaign, did not invent anything new. He simply worked on the image of Santa: he dressed him in a red sheepskin coat and made him a cozy white-curly beard, and the fabulous image resulting from simple manipulations took root perfectly in the mass consciousness. Yes, and I would not use Coca Cola to advertise an unknown character.

Haddon Sundblom himself did not hide the fact that during his work he drew inspiration from the poem Clement Moore "Visit of Saint Nicholas" or "Christmas Eve(almost like Gogol's!). Actually, the poem tells about Santa, who flies through the sky on a sleigh pulled by eight deer, and gives gifts to children.

The poem, meanwhile, was not just sweet and childish, but also ... political! Yes, don't be surprised! The thing is that Clement Moore borrowed his character from Washington Irving, and pedaling the image of a “good elf who brings gifts to children” was due to the fact that Protestants, unlike Catholics, were opposed to celebrating Christmas, because they considered this tradition a reference to the Catholic faith. So, Santa Claus became the very compromise character who helped shift the focus in the right direction and turn Christmas from a religious holiday into a family one. And it did work! Today, most kids associate Christmas only with Santa Claus, and in the cartoon "Polar Express" the child was even forcibly taken to the North Pole so that he would believe in a good grandfather with gifts.

ORIGINS: WHY STILL NICHOLAS?

So who is Santa Claus? Of course, this is St. Nicholas the Pleasant. And, if you study the life of the Saint, then you can find a curious story there. One man had three daughters, but the dowry in order to marry the girls, their father could neither save nor earn. And then dad decided to take the girls to a brothel, they say, they won’t be married anyway, otherwise they won’t die of hunger. Then St. Nicholas threw three golden balls into the window of the house where the girls lived, and, thanks to the gifts, the young ladies were able to avoid a shameful fate.

Well, Santa's appearance is a reference to the bishop's attire. By the way, in Croatia, where the majority of the population is Catholic, Santa Claus still looks like a real bishop.

CHARACTER EVOLUTION: THE DUTCH TRAIL

The origins of the fact that it is Saint Nicholas who brings gifts to children at Christmas should be sought in the culture of the Netherlands and Belgium, where this character is called Sinterklaas. It was believed that he annually sailed by ship to the country from Spain and gave gifts to kids, but not on Christmas, but on the night of December 5-6 - St. Nicholas Day.

Tellingly, Sinterklaas did this not on his own, but with the help of Black Petes - creatures that look like araps: with black curly hair, swarthy faces, lips with red lipstick and in velvet suits. Like, they had a book with them, in which the bad and good deeds of the children were meticulously recorded, so that the Petes, having gone down the chimney into the house, could not only bestow the child, but also whip him with rods, if the balance between bad and good actions were in favor of the first.

In the photo: a girl in the image of Black Pete

By the way, rods are still an attribute of Christmas in Europe, they are often sold at fairs. They are tied with scarlet ribbons and are used today for decorating rooms, and now almost no one remembers that the rods were originally a tool for festive flogging of naughty Dutch children.

In the photo: gilded rods - part of the decor of Christmas

But back to Sinterklass and Black Pete. Pete, as you may have guessed, is the ancestor of the Christmas elves, but there is no complete clarity with his own ancestors. They say that this image arose because of the Magi, who brought gifts to the baby Jesus, it’s not for nothing that he comes to children not empty-handed, and even so dark and curly. The first mention of Pete dates back to the 18th century, where he is referred to as a servant of St. Nicholas, in fact, after that this image was fixed in the popular mind. The tradition of hanging socks by the fireplace goes back to the Dutch custom of putting shoes by the fireplace - it was in them that Black Pete put gifts.

SANTA'S IMAGE TRANSFORMATION

After the Reformation, they tried to ban St. Nicholas Day, but this did not lead to anything, the people continued to celebrate it at home, and the church gradually waved its hand at the dull population. Later, Washington Irving decided to ridicule the Dutch with their tradition of celebrating the day of Sinterklaas, and thanks to this, Clement Moore found out about St. Nicholas, who wrote the very poem "The Night Before Christmas".

The prototype of Santa Claus was the Christian Saint Nicholas, the bishop of the city of Mira, known for secretly bringing gifts to the homes of poor families. Initially, in Europe it was customary to give gifts to children just on the day of St. Nicholas - December 6, and only from about the 17th century did this begin to be done at Christmas. Although in some European countries, for example, in the Netherlands, children are still given gifts on behalf of Santa Claus twice: on December 6 and 25. Interestingly, Saint Nicholas was considered the patron saint of New Amsterdam, which later became known as New York.

The first image of Santa Claus appears during the American Civil War. It was created by the famous American artist Thomas Nast (the one who drew caricatures of Democrats and Republicans in the form of an elephant and a donkey). In the pictures of Nesta Santa brings gifts not to children, but to soldiers at the front. Those. Santa is not a Christmas grandfather at all, but a front-line postman! In the drawings of Thomas Nest, Santa Claus, as befits a real military man, is slender and fit.

Santa "recovered" in 1931, when Coca-Cola made him the face of their advertising company. Artist Haddon Sundblom creatively reimagined Nast's image and created the Santa Claus we know today: a plump, smiling old man in a red and white camisole and a fur hat of the same colors. Naturally, such a color scheme was not chosen by chance - red and white are the signature colors of Coca-Cola. It is believed that Sundblom drew Santa from his neighbor, a traveling salesman named Lou Passion.

In order to send a letter to Santa Claus, you need to know his postal code. It is easiest for Canadians to remember it, because there it is written as H0H 0H0 - “Ho-ho-ho!”

Despite the fact that Santa's homeland is usually placed either in Lapland or at the North Pole, Canadians claim that Santa Claus is Canadian. They justify this by saying that the clothes of the Christmas character are the same colors as the flag of Canada.

The name of the Finnish Santa - Joulupukki - translates as "Christmas goat." This is due to a long-standing local tradition, when people dressed in goat skins, went from house to house, amused children and gave them gifts.

The residence of the African Santa Claus is located on top of the Kilimanjaro volcano, because. it is the only mountain in Africa where snow lies all year round.

Oddly enough, one of the most popular Christmas movies is Terry Zwingoff's comedy Bad Santa. This film is clearly not suitable for kids, because. the characters in it constantly swear. For example, the word fuck sounds in it as many as 147 times!

In the United States, the military from the Air Defense Center annually track the flight route of Santa Claus. The fact is that in 1955, one of the stores in the American city of Colorado Springs printed an advertisement in the local newspaper that you could call Santa. However, the store number was incorrectly listed, resulting in calls to the military base. The officers decided not to spoil the holiday for the children, and began to tell them the coordinates of the place where Santa Claus was flying at the time of the call. Since then, it has become a good Christmas tradition for the military under the name “NORAD Tracks Santa”. The kids love her! Now, Santa's movements around the world can be tracked using the official website of the military base, where the coordinates are transmitted in real time.

Andrei Shalygin: In fact, Christmas has nothing to do with Santa Claus or Santa Claus (Saint Nicholas, that is, Saint Nicholas), especially with deer. The fact is that the Archbishop of the World of Lycia Equal-to-the-Apostles Saint Nicholas, on the eve of the Nativity of Christ, always went around the laity and, secretly from them, so that no one would notice, left them gifts for Christmas in secluded places.

And he was, of course, not in a fur coat with fur lining. In the red clothes of a sedate elder, they write because before the introduction of different colors on the Twelfth Holidays, the festive miter was always of the same festive color - red, that is, purple, symbolizing the coming into the World of the King of People - Christ.

However, for people, of course, gifts for the New Year were more important, and since our very celebration of the New Year broke up with Christmas, and then communist propaganda tried its best to forget the very idea of ​​​​Christmas, then the grandfather in a fur coat living in the forest turned out to be more tenacious than Nicholas the Pleasant, as he is called among the people, who became Santa Claus with the pagan Berendey Snegurochka.

It is no coincidence that Christmas is the same central holiday of the church year as Easter: these holidays symbolize the most important events for Christians - the incarnation, the birth in the flesh of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross and the subsequent resurrection. According to the Bible, the Divine Infant was born on the night of December 25 in a cave near Bethlehem. The Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph were heading to this city for the census, announced by order of the King of Judea, Herod the Great, and spent the night in a cave. The Mother of God swaddled the newborn Jesus and put it in a manger (feeder for cattle), and soon the Magi came to the cave to bow to Christ.

Therefore, an indispensable attribute of the holiday was and remains christmas nativity scene- a sculptural image of the Baby Jesus in a manger, the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph in a cave (in fact, the word "nativity scene" in translation from Church Slavonic means "cave"). There may be more figures, but these three are required. In cathedrals and churches, nativity scenes are usually large: full-length painted figures, large decorations, and a large number of characters. Similar large nativity scenes appear on the streets of many European and American cities. But for home, so to speak, use, there are small folding nativity scenes, many of which are inherited in families for more than the first generation: they are placed on tables or on the floor near the Christmas tree just before Christmas.

Another common attribute of Christmas among Catholics is the so-called advent wreath. This is a small wreath, woven from spruce branches and decorated with ribbons, balls and other tinsel, on which four thick candles are fixed. Each of them symbolizes one of the four weeks of Advent - the month of strict fasting preceding Christmas among Catholics. Such wreaths can be seen from the end of November in all Catholic churches at the altars, and the vast majority of ordinary lay people are happy to put them on the table in their home - at least on Christmas Eve, that is, on the evening before Christmas. Once upon a time, candles were lit in sequence, one on each Sunday, but today, as a rule, they light up at the same time - it's more beautiful that way.

Mandatory for Catholics (and not only: similar services are also held by Protestants and other branches of Christianity living according to the Gregorian calendar) was and remains a visit to the Christmas Mass. On the night of December 25, there are three of them: Mass at night (Ad Missam in nocte), Mass at dawn (Ad Missam in aurora) and Mass during the day (Ad Missam in die). Each service has a special religious meaning, and Christmas is actually celebrated three times: during the first service - as the eternal birth of the Word from God the Father, during the second - as the birth of God the Son from the Virgin, and during the third - as the birth of God in the soul of the believer.

Among Catholics, the original idea of ​​an archbishop congratulating the flock on Christmas has remained closer to the original, so the main modern symbol of Christmas is Santa Claus, who is usually represented as a fat, good-natured old man with glasses and a white beard, dressed in a warm red jacket, pants and cap. However, the historical prototype of this character - St. Nicholas the Wonderworker - did not at all resemble him.

St Nicholas

Nicholas the Wonderworker is one of the most revered saints in the Christian world. He is considered the protector of ordinary people, the patron saint of navigation, trade and agriculture, as well as the guardian of the poor and orphans.

According to his life, St. Nicholas was born in the 3rd century AD. in the Greek colony of Patara in the Roman province of Lycia (on the territory of the modern province of Antalya in Turkey). He gained fame as the archbishop of the World of Lycia (Byzantium), thanks to his charity and protection of the innocently convicted, as well as numerous deeds and miracles.

Catholics currently commemorate St. Nicholas on December 6th. In the Orthodox tradition, this holiday is celebrated twice - on December 19 (December 6, according to the old style) "Winter Nicholas" and on May 22 (May 6, according to the old style) "Spring Nicholas".

The face of Archbishop Nicholas was reconstructed by a team of British anthropologists and Italian scientists from the remains, which are kept in the Basilica of St. Nicholas in Bari.

“The real Santa Claus was 170 cm tall and had sharp facial features, which seemed even more severe due to a broken nose. His skin was dark, short-cropped matted hair, a disheveled beard. A large, frightening-looking man,” the researchers said.

According to legend, Archbishop Nicholas tossed small bags of gold coins into the chimneys of poor girls who were old enough to marry but had no dowry.

The tradition of giving gifts on this day dates back to the 10th century, when on December 6, students of the parish school began to distribute sweets in the Cologne Cathedral. Later in Germany, shoes or socks were hung in houses so that St. Nicholas would put gifts for children there.

Santa Claus

Santa's reindeer

The tradition of depicting Santa on a sleigh pulled by reindeer originated at the beginning of the 19th century. In the first illustrations, Santa was driving a small sleigh pulled by a single reindeer. In 1823, the first edition of the famous poem "The Night Before Christmas" was published, in which eight "horned helpers" were already carrying the sleigh.

The ninth reindeer named Rudolph, who becomes the head of the team, did not appear until 1949, when Johnny Marks wrote the song "Rudolf, the Red Nosed Reindeer." The rest of the deer are named Dasher ("Stunning"), Dancer ("Dancer"), Prancer ("Prancing"), Vixen ("Evil"), Comet ("Comet"), Cupid ("Cupid"), Dander ("Dump" ) and Blixem ("Lightning").

Veterinarian Ellis Blue-McLendon of Texas A&M University says the deer are females. At the same time, she refers to the fact that by December 25, males are already getting rid of the horns, while Santa's sleigh is pulled by ungulates with horns. And deer specialist Gregory Finstead from the University of Alaska Fairbanks is of the opinion that Santa's little helpers are castrated males who get rid of their antlers only in February-March.

Physicists from Germany have calculated the speed with which Santa Claus must move on Christmas Eve in order to deliver all the gifts. This is approximately 28,416 kilometers per hour, which is 23 times the speed of sound. It also turned out that Santa Claus can't goad his reindeer with the traditional "Ho, ho, ho!" at supersonic speed, the scream will never reach the ears of the animals.

Santa Claus Corporation

Experts from Wired magazine "revealed" the business plan of the transnational corporation Santa Claus to deliver gifts for Christmas. With the help of business consultants, delivery and surveillance specialists, and Navy SEALs, a rough plan for her work in the United States was drawn up.

According to experts, the structure of Santa Claus Inc. includes, among others, a headquarters and operations center at the North Pole, secret factories in China and Eastern Europe, Pacific shipping lines, and a huge network of warehouses and local distribution centers. At the same time, the most modern technologies are used - the surveillance system of the National Security Agency allows delivering gifts at the very moment when the child is sleeping, and the supercomputer provides accurate information about good and bad children.

Tracking Santa

In recent years, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Google have been tracking Santa's flight online.

The tradition of tracking Santa's course on Christmas Eve originated as early as 1955 after a misprint in a Colorado newspaper advertisement in which NORAD (at the time: Continental Air Defense Command - CONRAD) instead of Santa's hotline number was listed. As more calls came to the number, the commander on the other end of the line began to impersonate Santa Claus, and since 1958 this has become one of the modern holiday customs.

NORAD experts say the Christmas sleigh surveillance system works thanks to the nose of Rudolph the reindeer, which emits a special infrared signal that resembles the one that occurs when rockets are launched.

In recent years, you can track Santa's flight on your own using Twitter microblogs or the Facebook social network, as well as on a specially created website using Google Maps and Google Earth services. The map shows the route traveled, the next point and the number of gifts already presented.

Anton Smertin

How Christmas is celebrated

But outside the actual church holiday, everyone is preparing for Christmas and celebrating it to their taste and in accordance with national traditions. Most will try to decorate the door of their house with a Christmas wreath that resembles an Advent wreath without candles: this is a sign that Christ is expected and rejoiced in the house. Also, most of those celebrating Catholic Christmas, having gathered for a festive dinner on Christmas Eve, will certainly put an extra chair at the table, and an extra appliance on the table. On the one hand, this symbolizes the readiness of the family to meet and feed anyone who looks into the light that evening; on the other hand, this is a reminder of all relatives and friends who cannot meet the festive evening at the common table; and on the third, it is a sign of memory and respect for those members of the family who are no longer alive, but who, as Catholics believe, are waiting for them on the other side of earthly existence.

By the way, about beliefs, more precisely, about the heritage of pagan times. Many ethnologists believe that it is no coincidence that Catholic Christmas took root so quickly and became so widespread, first in Europe, and then in the New World. According to scientists, the custom of celebrating the birth of the Baby Jesus at the end of December, immediately after the night of the winter solstice, perfectly coincided with the pagan traditions of meeting the turn of winter. And therefore, in many European countries, especially in Northern and Eastern Europe, to this day there are Christmas customs with obvious pagan roots, not approved by the official church, but traditionally observed by the laity. For example, "Christmas log": such a log is chosen in advance from the most straight and clean, on Christmas Eve they bring it into the house, carve a cross on it, then pour it with oil and honey and burn it in a stove or in a fireplace.

The same legacy of pagan beliefs that have become accustomed to Christianity is the indispensable Christmas tree. The Germans were the first to put it on Christmas - first in large city squares, and then at home, and after them the custom migrated to other European countries, from where it spread throughout the world - along with Christianity.

Christmas table

The festive Christmas table is also varied, since the traditional Christmas dishes in each country are different. For example, in Great Britain it is an oven-baked turkey in gooseberry sauce and Christmas pudding, which is poured over with rum, set on fire and served as such. IN America the same Christmas turkey is served on the table in cranberry sauce, and in France- in white wine sauce. But in Austria, Hungary and in many Balkan countries there is never a bird on the Christmas table: it is believed that it is impossible to eat it that evening - happiness will fly away.

IN Germany a traditional Christmas dish is confectionery: gingerbread, muffins or cinnamon stars, in Italy and Spain- seafood, Norway- fish, and Portugal- dried salted cod, which is usually washed down with port wine. The indispensable common attributes of the Christmas table among Catholics and Protestants are perhaps an Advent wreath and a dish with wafers - consecrated unleavened bread, which those gathered share with each other, wishing peace and good.

And of course, Christmas is an indispensable gift! Since in the Western European tradition it is the birth of Jesus that is the main winter holiday, much more important than the New Year, then the main gifts are given precisely at Christmas. The tradition of Christmas gifts also goes back to the legend of the Magi worshiping the newborn Baby Jesus: they brought him gold, frankincense and myrrh as a gift. Of course, neither myrrh nor incense is given today to any of the laity, but gold, or rather, gold jewelry, is one of the most common gifts.

Children, of course, are waiting for toys and hang red and white woolen socks on the mantelpiece (who has a fireplace) or over the bed (who does not have a fireplace) in advance. This tradition came from England: they believe that Santa Claus, who has a habit of looking into chimneys on Christmas Eve nights to find out how children are behaving, accidentally dropped a few coins from his pocket that fell into a sock drying by the fire. Since then, it has been traditionally believed that Santa Claus puts gifts in socks, descending from the roof along the chimney. souvenir.

And, for example, in Zimbabwe each family has to prepare a huge amount of Christmas gifts - several dozen! And the point is not only that African families, as a rule, have very large families. It's just that in this country it is customary to visit all relatives and friends on the way home from the Christmas service - and when you go in, you will certainly receive a gift. And although there is no such custom in other countries, it is considered indecent to refuse someone a good deed at Christmas. And in general, the month before Christmas is considered the time when you need to do philanthropy and charity - in memory of the good people who once sheltered the Holy Family.

Tatyana Rubleva