Joy of Christmas

Posts Tagged ‘santa’

NORTH POLE, Alaska – It’s early December here, and Mr. and Mrs. Claus are certainly busy.

For starters, there are all those visitors who have dropped by their spacious white-and-red house to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him exactly what they want for Christmas.

In the back, the elves – including dozens of extra little hands hired for the season – are rushing to get thousands of personalized “Letters from Santa” delivered to the local post office.

Outside in temperatures that have already dipped below zero, four of Santa’s reindeer are taking it all lying down in their pen, seemingly oblivious to the all-night mission they will once again be asked to fly in just a few weeks.

This is not the North Pole, of course, but the interior Alaskan community of the same name, 14 miles south of Fairbanks at 64.5 degrees north latitude – just south of the Arctic Circle. Not surprisingly, holiday banners, candy-cane street signs, and other Christmas-themed decorations remain up throughout the year.

And the star attraction in this low-slung community of about 1,800 is the rambling, 55-year-old emporium at 101 St. Nicholas Drive known far and wide as the Santa Claus House.

Like most of North Pole’s 100,000 annual visitors, my wife and I and our 5-year-old twin daughters came to visit the Clauses during the summer – in our case, over the Labor Day weekend, when more than just a hint of snow already hung in the gray northern sky.

We had no trouble finding it, not with the world’s largest Santa statue (42 feet tall and weighing 900 pounds) standing sentinel outside and an equally supersized two-dimensional image posing next to a 30-foot-tall, red-and-white- striped “north” pole.

Having already stocked up on T-shirts, stuffed animals, and other standard Alaska-themed merchandise at previous stops, we bypassed those items for the much larger Christmas Shoppe in back. Just as the promotional materials promise, it is indeed “Christmas every day.” Carols drifted through the air, while White Christmas, the 1954 Bing Crosby/Danny Kaye movie, plays continuously on an elevated TV monitor.

We had scarcely begun surveying row upon row of holiday merchandise, including some distinctly Alaskan items – Eskimo nativity sets, beaver-pelt pillows, and birch bowls – when the jingle of sleigh bells heralded the return of the jolly old homeowner himself, back from a coffee break. Attired in his traditional white-trimmed plush red suit, he climbed into his equally plush chair, and our girls, suddenly stricken with shyness, were his first photo-op customers ($5 with their camera, free with ours).

They were followed by a German couple in their 60s who could not quite make up their minds how seriously to take this distinctly American encounter, and two thirtysomething newlyweds from California who were a little shy about telling the old married man exactly what they wanted.

Any hopes Santa might have had for an afternoon nap went up the chimney with the arrival of a bus full of post-cruise seniors from Minnesota who had few qualms about either plopping onto his lap (mostly the women) or standing alongside (mostly the men).

While the grandparents dashed off their just-bought postcards so they could be stamped “Santa’s Official Mail” and placed orders for the Santa Claus House’s trademark “Letter from Santa,” we slipped outside to check on Dasher, Blitzen, Comet and Cupid. None of the four domesticated caribou looked the least bit flightworthy, but then they still had four months to get in shape – or so we explained to our daughters.

Placards attached to spruce trees explained the historical origins of such Christmas traditions as the 12 days, the candy cane and the Christmas tree – unexpected notes of serious religion in an otherwise constant chorus of commercialism.

If nothing else, the Santa Claus House comes by its commercialism honestly. Situated along a marshy creek known as Fourteen-Mile Slough, the site was homesteaded in 1944 by Bon Davis, who named the soon-to-be-established whistle-stop on the Alaska Railroad for himself.

The development company that bought out Davis renamed the settlement North Pole, to attract a toy manufacturer that could label its products “Made at the North Pole.” But given North Pole’s high shipping costs and shallow labor pool, no toy manufacturer ever materialized.

But Conrad and Nellie Miller, homesteaders from Washington state who had settled in Fairbanks in 1949 with only $1.40 to their names, did.

Miller, a traveling fur trader who had taken to dressing up as Santa Claus when calling on native villages in the winter, decided that North Pole – sitting between two growing military bases – would be the site of his own permanent trading post.

As the company story goes, Miller was building a wall one day in 1952 when he was recognized by one of the native children he had visited. “Hey, Santa Claus,” the boy called, “are you building a new house?”

It was a marketing match made in frontier Alaska, and Miller promptly ran it up the North Pole. A half-century later, and thanks to quantum leaps in transportation and communication (especially the Internet), plus the 1983 arrival of that fiberglass Santa – who started off life as a prototype for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair – the Santa Claus House is an institution, securely in the hands of the Miller children.

Toting some truly unique early Christmas gifts, we repaired to our rental sleigh and headed back to Fairbanks. As we drove north out of North Pole, I couldn’t help but marvel at the resourcefulness and determination of those territorial pioneers – and ponder the ultimate mystery of the Santa Claus House:

If every day here really is Christmas, when do they hold their “after Christmas” sale?

Popular Christmas movies would have you believe that Santa’s biggest problem is people who stop believing. (See Miracle on 34th Street, The Year Without a Santa Claus, Elf, etc.) But today it’s the believers who are causing Saint Nick so much grief. When announcing on Friday that role models have an obligation to promote healthy lifestyles, U.S. Surgeon General Steven Galson explained to the Boston Herald: “Santa is no different.”

But Santa is different. For starters, he’s not … well, you know … [Ed.: “Hey! My kids read this!]

Galson’s comment is merely one in a long string of outrageous accusations by health officials that show just how far removed from reality the anti-fat movement has become. Each preposterous claim seeks to place the blame for obesity on anyone other than ourselves.

Attacks on Santa highlight the absurdity and hypocrisy of many nutrition zealots. Over the years, food cops have lobbied for warning labels on milk, chips, menus, salt, and countless other foods. But now, that’s precisely the notion they’re arguing against. On the Fox News Channel this weekend, publicist-turned-food-cop Meme Roth commented on one soft-drink company’s use of Saint Nick on soda packaging: “I see a warning label. Drink this, and look how your body will look.”

Roth claims the time-honored tubbiness of Father Christmas sets a bad example: “We’re talking morbid obesity, which is not jolly.” Take her comments with a grain of government-rationed salt: Roth previously grouped voluptuous singer Jordan Sparks and wives too big for their wedding dresses into the same fat-and-unjolly category. But as recent studies demonstrate, Americans who carry a few extra pounds have the lowest mortality of any weight group.

Just look at Kris Kringle. He’s beaten the average life expectancy by over a thousand years without the help of Grinch-like food regulations.

Leaving a life of driving for a rich family and then reinventing himself as a craftsman proved right for Fred Velasques.

On Saturday, Velasques buoyed sagging spirits by making a 20-foot figure of a sitting and smiling Santa Claus that SM City Clark touts to be the biggest in the Philippines.

This piece made from fiberglass, which he and his 21 employees carved, came in the 11th year of his business, Candellero Handicraft.

“We made many people happy, especially the children,” Velasques, 55, told the Inquirer minutes after SM executives, Pampanga Gov. Eddie Panlilio and Clark International Airport Corp. executive vice president Alex Cauguiran unveiled the giant Santa Claus in a red-carpet event.

His company did not charge anything for this undertaking.

“Seeing smiles on the faces of young and old mall goers was enough,” Velasques said.

Around 2,000 shoppers filled the first and second floors near the event center to catch a glimpse of the Yuletide character.

Velasques and his family have settled and done business in Mabalacat, Pampanga, since starting the enterprise in 1996.

It took two months for his team to finish their first giant figure.

With business partner Delia Mojica, he had been making life-size images of animals, cartoon characters or real-life personalities for garden resorts and museums. They also make small figures for home displays.

“We started with just P20,000 in capital,” Velasques said.

Resin and fiberglass are his media.

He measured the firm’s success by the stable employment it gives to at least 30 workers.

And, of course, that includes not anymore living on a low monthly wage.

He ended his career in driving because “walang asenso dun (I won’t earn enough).”

His employer, a resident of a plush subdivision in Makati City, let him go and bade him good luck.

Velasques said he gathered all the courage he could for the career change.

He said he finished only first year in high school and ventured in a field that he knew little about.

“This entailed industry and hard work,” Velasques said.

Michelle Catap, a staff member of the SM City Clark public relations department, said Velasques offered to make the giant Santa Claus to be able to “spread joy to the children.”

Catap said Velasques asked that big carton boxes be placed around it to receive donations of toys for poor children. SM City Clark would turn over the donations to the Department of Social Welfare and Development in Pampanga.

In advance of the holiday season and its 52nd season of tracking Santa Claus on his annual journey around the world, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has activated its “NORAD Tracks Santa” website for 2007.

The U.S.-Canadian command’s program began in 1955 when an errant phone call was made to NORAD’s predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. The call was from a local child who dialed a misprinted telephone number in a local newspaper advertisement.

The commander who answered the phone that night gave the youngster the information he requested – the whereabouts of Santa Claus – and thus the tradition of NORAD tracking Santa began.

The program has grown immensely since it was first presented on the Internet in 1998. In 2006, the website received a whopping 941 million hits from 210 countries and territories. In addition, the NTS Operations Center, occupied by 756 volunteers on Christmas Eve, answered nearly 65,000 phone calls and 96,000 emails from children around the world.

The website features the history of the program, information on how NORAD tracks Santa and interactive games. On December 24, beginning at 2:00 a.m. Mountain Standard Time (4 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, 9 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time), the website will feature a minute-by-minute update on Santa’s travels around the world. All of this information is available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

Corporate partners Google, Booz Allen Hamilton, Analytical Graphics, Inc., Verizon, Official Santa Mail, Globelink Language and Cultural Services, Inc., Avaya, Qwest, Plantronics, First Choice Awards and Gifts, Meshbox, e-frontier and The North Pole help to make the program possible, NORAD officials said.

More than 11 percent of the Dutch believes that Santa Claus is a character from the Bible. This emerged on Wednesday from a poll of 2,700 people by website Vergelijk.nl.

Only 2 percent thinks that commercial competitor Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) is a biblical figure.

More than 50 percent of respondents believes Santa Claus is originally based on Saint Nicholas. 25 percent says they have no idea where Santa Claus comes from and the remaining 25 percent says he was invented by Coca Cola.

Santa Claus is presumably derived from Saint Nicholas, whose feast day the Dutch colonists brought to America in the 17th century. The appearance of Santa Claus as we know him today was largely created by American soft drink manufacturer Coca Cola.

See: Is Santa Claus based on Coca Cola? (hint: no…)

Children from around the world will again have help from the Canadian and U.S. military’s NORAD website to keep tabs on Santa’s location as Christmas approaches.

“Last year the website received over 940 million hits from 210 countries and territories,” Acting Sub-Lieut. David Lavallee said from Winnipeg today.

“I can remember myself sitting in front of the TV listening and watching and getting those updates. It’s different now, of course, with the website.”

The North American Aerospace Defense Command accidentally began its Santa-tracking program 52 years ago, when a boy from Colorado Springs, Colo., dialled a wrong number printed in a newspaper.

Instead of Santa, he got NORAD headquarters on the phone.

The commander in charge that night told him where Santa was, and the program began. At first, Santa’s whereabouts were reported through radio and TV stations, but about 10 years ago, the service moved to the Internet.

It now has more than 750 volunteers fielding calls from children. Last year, it handled 65,000 calls and 96,000 e-mails.

“Right now there’s a video that shows Santa flying around different locations in the world,” Lavallee said.

The website will also begin a countdown to Christmas, with interactive games, on Saturday.

“And starting at 2 a.m. on Christmas Eve there will be minute-by-minute updates,” he said. “There will also be Santa-cam images, video and still images of Santa around the globe.”

The website is available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

Working at a newspaper means you experience it all.

Reporters are asked to enter the depths of prisons, stand alongside the coroner at murder scenes, travel into battle with soldiers and question governmental leaders with no mercy.

We represent you — the reader — when you can’t be there. And we take the duty seriously.

So, Tuesday I left our office, notebook in hand prepared to ask the tough questions and handle the heat.

Twenty minutes later I got the answer I was looking for.

“I saw Santa in my mommy’s room.”

The words came confidently bounding from the mouth of a kindergarten student in the reading lab of hall C at West Primary School.

I quickly suppressed a grin. The teacher standing behind the student didn’t have to.

“Oh, did you,” I said. “Did you say anything to Santa?”

“I said, ‘I see Santa Claus,’” she said.

And that was that.

But the three others at the table admitted they’d only seen Santa at the mall, never in their very own house.

“He was there, but I was asleep,” the little boy said.

And that’s a good thing, he said, because if Santa ever asked him to fly along in the sleigh, he’d be scared.

Trust in Santa ends with faith that the toys will come, apparently.

And these four 5 and 6 year olds do trust Santa for that.

In fact, their trust is so deep that they see no need at all to even let Santa know what they want this year.

The children had no plan to make their requests — for a computer, a bike, a PlayStation and a car — known to dear old Mr. Claus.

Santa knows what they want because, “He’ll think.”

And magically lists will appear in his head, I suppose.

“He has a note,” one of the children said.

“He knows who has been bad and who has been good,” another said, proving children know their Christmas songs well.

But none of the children suggested the obvious way to tell Santa what they want — by writing a letter.

I guess it’s the Internet age’s effect that makes our little ones forget the simple, faithful U.S. Postal Service.

Santa probably has multiple e-mail addresses by now, and I’m sure he texts.

In fact, these kids think Santa is so modern that he’s shut down his workshop and now gets his toys “out of a store.”

It’s thinking like this that has made one of The Democrat’s annual publications a little harder in the last few years.

Christmas Greetings is a special edition that includes letters to Santa from area children.

But in order to publish the section — which is sure to make adults giggle — we rely on children to submit letters.

And as soon as we make a copy of the letter, we forward it directly to Santa at the North Pole, via the U.S. Postal Service.

Adults can encourage their own children to write letters, or teachers can make it a class project.

We don’t worry a bit about spelling, or even whether the letters face the right direction.

Letter writers can drop off their requests at our office at 503 N. Canal St., or mail them to P.O. Box 1447, Natchez, MS 39121.

Or, if you prefer the modern-Santa way, e-mail them to santa@natchezdemocrat.com.

We’ll need all the letters by Dec. 14, in order to get them to Santa in time for him to go “shopping at the store.”

The special Santa letters publication will come out in the Dec. 20 newspaper.

Be sure to cut our your child or grandchild’s letter for the scrapbook.

Now, I have to get back to work, reporting on very serious matters.

Did someone say they saw the tooth fairy?

Joy of Christmas is an outspoken believer in the existence of Santa Claus. However, some sources quoted in this entry are from “unbelievers”.

• Does Santa Claus exist?
• History of Santa Claus
• Saint Nicholas and Christmas
• Santa Claus Today

• Books
• Movies
• Web sites

Does Santa Claus exist?

Joy of Christmas has done extensive research and has established that, yes, Santa Claus (a.k.a. Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Santy or simply Santa) does exist. This information is so factual that, even though he tries to remain anonymous, he shows up in several US census reports; in 1900, 1910, and 1930.

History of Santa Claus

Santa is a variant of a European folk tale based on the historical figure Saint Nicholas, a bishop from present-day Turkey, who supposedly gave presents to the poor. Originally, this had nothing to do with Christmas, however the Germans had a tradition of giving gifts on Christmas and at some point in history traditions merged. This helped to explain the source of Christmas presents given to children on Christmas Day.

The name is derived from the Dutch Sinterklaas, an intermediate figure between the bishop and the Christmas icon. He forms part of the Christmas tradition throughout the English speaking world as well as in Latin America and Japan.

In Eastern Orthodox tradition, he visits children on the New Year’s Day and is identified with Saint Basil whose memory is celebrated on that day.
• Source: Wikipedia

Saint Nicholas and Christmas

The historical Saint Nicholas was venerated in early Christian legend for saving storm-tossed sailors, defending young children, and giving generous gifts to the poor. Although many of the stories about Saint Nicholas are of doubtful authenticity (for example, he is said to have delivered a bag of gold to a poor family by tossing it through a window), his legend spread throughout Europe, emphasizing his role as a traditional bringer of gifts. The Christian figure of Saint Nicholas replaced or incorporated various pagan gift-giving figures such as the Roman Befana and the Germanic Berchta and Knecht Ruprecht. The saint was called Sankt Nikolaus in Germany and Sanct Herr Nicholaas or Sinter Klaas in Holland. In these countries Nicholas was sometimes said to ride through the sky on a horse. He was depicted wearing a bishop’s robes and was said to be accompanied at times by Black Peter, an elf whose job was to whip the naughty children.

The feast day of Nicholas, when presents were received, was traditionally observed on December 6. After the Reformation, German Protestants encouraged veneration of the Christkindl (Christ child) as a gift giver on his own feast day, December 25. When the Nicholas tradition prevailed, it became attached to Christmas itself. Because the saint’s life is so unreliably documented, Pope Paul VI ordered the feast of Saint Nicholas dropped from the official Roman Catholic calendar in 1969. The term Christkindl evolved to Kriss Kringle, another nickname for Santa Claus. Various other European Christmas gift givers were more or less similar to Saint Nicholas: Père Noël in France, Julenisse in Scandinavia, and Father Christmas in England.
• Source: “Santa Claus,” Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2005

Santa Claus Today

Or: Santa Claus and Coca Cola

It’s sometimes claimed that the modern image of Santa Claus — a jolly figure in a red-and-white suit — was created by Coca-Cola. This is not true.

A Boston printer named Louis Prang introduced the English custom of Christmas cards to America, and in 1885 he issued a card featuring a red-suited Santa. The chubby Santa with a red suit (like an “overweight superhero”) began to replace the fur-dressed Belsnickle image and the multicolored Santas.

At the beginning of the 1930s, the burgeoning Coca-Cola company was still looking for ways to increase sales of their product during winter, then a slow time of year for the soft drink market. They turned to a talented commercial illustrator named Haddon Sundblom, who created a series of memorable drawings that associated the figure of a larger than life, red-and-white garbed Santa Claus with Coca-Cola. Coke’s annual advertisements — featuring Sundblom-drawn Santas holding bottles of Coca-Cola, drinking Coca-Cola, receiving Coca-Cola as gifts, and especially enjoying Coca-Cola — became a perennial Christmastime feature which helped spur Coca-Cola sales throughout the winter (and produced the bonus effect of appealing quite strongly to children, an important segment of the soft drink market). The success of this advertising campaign has helped fuel the legend that Coca-Cola actually invented the image of the modern Santa Claus, decking him out in a red-and-white suit to promote the company colors — or that at the very least, Coca-Cola chose to promote the red-and-white version of Santa Claus over a variety of competing Santa figures in order to establish it as the accepted image of Santa Claus.

This legend is not true. Although some versions of the Santa Claus figure still had him attired in various colors of outfits past the beginning of the 20th century, the jolly, ruddy, sack-carrying Santa with a red suit and flowing white whiskers had become the standard image of Santa Claus by the 1920s, several years before Sundlom drew his first Santa illustration for Coca-Cola.
• Source: Snopes Urban Legends Reference Pages

- Books -

• The Autobiography of Santa Claus
  

  John H. Mayer’s warm and leisurely reading certainly puts one in mind of the classic nineteenth-century Claus, but it’s the generous sprinkling of facts that draws one in. Combines historical fact with glorious legend as St. Nicholas himself reveals the definitive story of Santa Claus.

  With seven centuries of holiday magic all rolled into twenty-four chapters-one for each cold December night leading up to Christmas-The Autobiography of Santa Claus is a great gift for the whole family.
  • Source: Amazon.com

• The Real Santa Claus : Legends of Saint Nicholas
• Flight of the Reindeer : The True Story of Santa Claus and his Christmas Mission
  

  Flight of the Reindeer offers proof positive that there is a Santa Claus and yes, reindeer really do know how to fly. Robert Sullivan, a senior editor at Life magazine, diligently gathered documentation from respected scientists, historians, zoologists, and Arctic explorers to prove once and for all that Santa is not just a myth.

  Will Steger, world famous as a Polar explorer, reveals his extraordinary adventure: his 1986 expedition to Santa Claus’s village at the North Pole. from Smithsonian writer Bil Gilbert, Sullivan learns of the little-known species of Rangifer tarandus pearyi, the flying reindeer from whose ranks are chosen the select few to pull Santa’s sleigh. From former president George Bush, he learns that “helping that fellow clear his airspace by signing the Santa Claus Clause was a great privilege of my office.”
  • Source: Amazon.com

• Christmas Trivia

- Movies -

• Santa Claus – The Movie (1985)
• Biography: Santa Claus (2005)
• The Secret World of Santa Claus (2005)
• Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
• The Miracle On 34th Street (1955)
• Miracle on 34th Street (1994)

- Web Sites -

• Wikipedia : Santa Claus
• Britannica Concise Encyclopedia entry on St. Nicholas
• History Channel : Santa Claus
• Saint Nicholas: Discovering the Truth about Santa Claus
• About Xmas : Santa Claus History
• Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus (world-famous The New York Sun editorial from 1897)
• Bah, Humbug, Virginia!
• The X-Mas Files X-Files Mulder/Scully spoof of a scene where Santa Claus has been.
• Santa Claus Live (see Santa Claus live from December 1 – January 10)
• US Census proof Santa exists
• 5 Philosophical ways to prove Santa exists
• Chat with Santa starts in December
• Claus.com Some parts are extremely slow loading, at times not at all
• NORAD Tracks Santa tracking Santa Claus on his your around the world on Christmas Eve since 1958. Videos of earlier sightings available. Live tracking available Christmas Eve only.