Independent work “countryknowing”

Christmas

• December 25 Christmas is very big in America. People decorate their homes weeks in advance and shops, malls and restaurants are full of Christmas trees and Santa Figures. A lot of shops offer pictures to take for kids with the real Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve, which is on December 24, a lot of people go to church and then the kids have to go to sleep, of course after putting their stocking up at the chimney, so Santa Claus can come and fill the stocking and lay the presents under the Christmas tree. The story of Santa Claus began a few hundred years ago in what today is Turkey, where St. Nicholas lived, who became a saint for giving all his money to the poor. From this figure derived all the European images of St. Nicholas, which were brought to America by the European settlers where they all mixed up. As time went by, the image of the Bishop in a red robe changed to the jolly old elf he is known as today. This picture was drawn by a lot of writers, for example Washington Irving describes him in his comic ,,History of New York" as a plump and jolly old Dutchman and this was continued by Clement Moore's poem ,,A Visit From St. Nicholas", which we read in school. In the 1860s cartoonist Thomas Nash drew pictures of a plump and kindly Santa Claus for an illustrated paper. These images were ingrained into the minds of American people, including the eight reindeers with Rudolph being the most famous one. Santa Claus fills the stockings. This tradition is based on the story of nobleman who had three daughters and whose wife died of an illness. The nobleman soon lost all of his money in useless inventions, so they had to move into a cottage. The daughters couldn't marry because they had no dowries and money and property. One night they hung their stockings over the fireplace to dry, and when St. Nicholas came by and saw their despair, he dropped three bags of gold down the chimney right in the girls` stockings and so they could marry. Since then, in a lot of countries in the world, kids set up their boots or stockings for St. Nicholas to come and put something in it. So after Santa Claus came down the chimney and filled the stockings, he will leave the bigger presents under the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree was introduced to America by German settlers and was considered an oddity until the end of the 19th century. Today it is most common and every year the President of the United States of America light the National Christmas Tree in Washington D.C., and people go ice skating beneath the lighted tree in Rockefeller Center, NYC. Remember Kevin alone in NY, when Kevin and his mom meet at the Christmas tree.