Customer Reviews

There Really is a Santa Claus - History of Saint Nicholas & Christmas Holiday Traditions

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I received Bill Federer's "American Minute" emails for several years and they were fascinating facts of US history. I came to rely on him for his accurate and well written research and expected more from his book. It's interesting in that it tells the origins of our current Christmas traditions and while the book contains some interesting information, the layout is a mass of pages filled with words with no starting or stopping point. It would have been sufficient to look up the information online myself and then highlighted the standout points.

William J. Federer is an American historian and writer, who has written books such as America's God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations, What Every American Needs to Know About the Qur'an - A History of Islam & the United States, Backfired: A Nation Born For Religious Tolerance No Longer Tolerates Religion, Treasury Of Presidential Quotations, etc. He also has a daily radio show, The American Minute, which summarized what happened on that day in history.

This 2003 book begins with St. Nicholas himself, and includes detailed accounts of all the stories and legends about him. Then it jumps rather abruptly to the 10th century, then the 13th, etc. While the book perhaps overdoes it in terms of quoting Presidential Christmas addresses (which actually make up the majority of the book), there is a lot of interesting historical material here.

Here are some quotations from the book:

"Martin Luther ... realized, though, the importance of traditions in people's lives, especially at Christmas time, so he sought to refocus the people's thought on the Christ Child, which in old German was pronounced 'Kris Kindl' (Christkindl), later pronounced 'Kris Kringle.' He taught Christ was the giver of all gifts and our gift-giving should be in remembrance of the great gifts Christ gave us." (Pg. 39)
"Some traditions have clearly pagan backgrounds, such as: 'Mistletoe,' which was hung up by the Druids to ward off evil spirits, which custom of kissing under it originated with the Celts and Teutons of northern Europe; the 'Yule Log,' was blessed by the Druids with a great ceremony at their winter feast, promising it would bring good luck if it could be kept burning during the entire winter solstice... 'Wassailing' was the practice of pouring wassail punch ... on their trees, fields, beehives, in an attempt to bring luck for the next year's harvests." (Pg. 47)
"The Greek symbol X is the abbreviation of Christos, and is the origin of X-mas as 'Christmas.'" (Pg. 55)
(President John Kennedy, on December 17, 1962) "...I was struck by the fact that in the far off continents Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, as well as Christians, pause from their labors on the 25th day of December to celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace. There could be no more striking proof that Christmas is truly the universal holiday of all men." (Pg. 157)

This book was received in a timely manner and was everything I thought it would be. Lots of questions were answered by reading this.

The vast majority of this book is long excerpts from presidential Christmas speechs; after a long survey, it appears only Reagan mentions Santa Claus at all. A short beginning section is a weak overview which deals more with St. Nicholas than with Santa Claus. All in all, a very shoddy and deceptive work (some of the sparse illustrations reproduce crude web images). The author should be ashamed of himself for filling out his very short work with useless US presidential speechs.

A great history of the origin of Santa !

But the author does neglect the fact that that North Pole bit is a cover story for the fact that Santa's workshop is actually operated in an alternative Dimension.(free labor + the love of "gifting" + no taxes (quite unnatural !! ))

Author also neglected to mention that Santa's sleigh is supported by superconductive runners as solar wind pushes him up along the earth's magnetic flux lines (which do eminate from Earth's poles) into orbit.

He also still sticks with that chimney delivery story...

...when all us elves know that Santa simply flips the pkgs into the appropriate "worm holes" for delivery to all the good boys & girls ! (He still hasn't told us how he does that ??

PerU Senior Elf, Engineering Dept, Bldg 7, North Pole