Christmas Every Day

A 1990 religious tract from North Carolina shows Santa Claus in the form of a devil. It includes a poem called “Ho! Ho! Ho!”:

The devil has a demon,

His name is Santa Claus.

He’s a dirty old demon

Because of last year’s flaws.

He promised Jack a yo-yo,

And Jill a diamond ring.

They woke up on Christmas morning

Without a single thing…..

One day they’ll stand before God

Without their bag of tricks.

Without their red-nosed reindeer

Or their phony old Saint Nicks;

For Revelation twenty-one,

Verse eight, tells where they’ll go:

Condemned to everlasting hell,

Where there’ll be no Ho! Ho! Ho!

One of the major Italian magical Gift-Bringers is the Befana, a kindly witch who visits children on the eve of Epiphany (her name is a corruption of Epiphania). During the fascist period from 1922-45, the dictator Benito Mussolini supplanted the broom-borne crone as the provider of all good things for Italy’s little ones.

Medieval legend says that St Nicholas saved three daughters of a poor man from lives of shame by dropping bags of gold into their stockings. From this came the tradition of setting out a stocking or shoe during the Christmas season for the Gift-Bringer to fill it with treats and presents. Given Santa Claus’s usual means of entry, the fireplace was the logical location to hang up one’s stocking, as can be seen in Clement Moore’s 1821 “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”:

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,/ And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,/ And laying his finger aside of his nose,/ And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

However, placing a stocking by the window, at the foot of one’s bed or by the family crèche also have their supporters. For a time, after the middle of the nineteenth century, the stocking was eclipsed by the Christmas tree as the place to find one’s presents but in many families the two have long coexisted with small presents and candies being put in the stocking and larger gifts ending up under the tree.

In England and in British Commonwealth countries such as South Africa or Australia, it is customary for a pillow-case to serve as a stocking. In some areas the receptacle is called a “Santa Sack.”

The Christmas season in Latvia seemed  to bring about premature beard growth in children.

It is said in Sheffield, England “A candle or lamp should be left burning all night on Christmas Eve. Unless this is done there will be a death in the house” 

Another Christmas superstition was that of decoration, especially in the north of England, in Northumberland. Many superstitions rose up in the area about how long to leave boughs of holly, both in the home and in the church. For many centuries the standard operating procedure was to leave them in place until 2 February (Candlemas) at the home, or else “something evil” would befall one of the senior members of the family. But in the church, practice was far more stringent, with the stipulation that were any of the festive decorations still left in the pews after Candlemas someone in the family that occupied that pew would die, and die soon to boot. Some people were so frightened of this possibility that instead of leaving the cleaning to the church authorities they would send their own servants to clean their pews.

It has been our experience that women usually prefer thin, undernourished, flatchested females, dressed to the teeth, as a concept of “feminine beauty” — and that men prefer exactly the opposite: voluptuous, well-rounded and undressed. The women’s idealization of woman is actually a male counterpart, competing with man in society; man’s view of women is far more truly feminine.