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Who brings the gifts (jakubmarian.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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https://jakubmarian.com/christmas-gift-bringers-of-europe/

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The note on the Low Countries says there's no traditional Christmas gift-giver, but doesn't Sinterklaas traditionally bring gifts on Sint Nicolasdaag?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yes, but that's a different holiday

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Then the Ukrainian and Russians don't count either

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Chistmas starts at Holy Eve and ends on Epiphany, January 6th, so New Year's Eve fits into that time frame.

Saint Nicolaus' December 6th according to the Julian calendar is probably on December 19th according to Gregorian calendar, thus, this is a different holiday.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

As a non christian, I'm talking about 'the winter holiday where gifts are given' which happens to be on slightly different dates depending on local traditions.
Basing the definition of what counts as 'christmas' on the church calendar isn't very helpful in this global context where most people celebrating aren't christian believers to begin with. And of course the christians borrowed from older traditions, which where also on different dates originally

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Santa Claus is a straight copy of Sinterklaas. Even Wikipedia says so. Also, I don't know any Dutch kids that believe in Santa Claus but a great many believe in Sinterklaas. Santa is not a gift giver here at all. If there are gifts at Christmas (a minority) then it's given by family, not by Santa.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

In Germany, Saint Nicolaus is filling boots of the nice kids with nuts, oranges and chocolate (or alike) on the morning of December 6th and also doesn't bring the Christmas gifts.
The Weihnachtsmann (or Santa Claus), however, afaIk, was imported from the US in the last century, where it had evolved from the St. Nicolaus figure.
As I'm from a 'Chist child' family, I don't know if the Weihnachtsmann actually "brings" the presents in the more northern parts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

So many mandarines/clementines on Sinterklaas 😭

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

I always found the image of the Christ child lugging all the gifts around funny as an American who grew up in Germany.