Happy Holidays

[kandrathe]

I think that what you are doing, instilling humane values into your children and teaching them the sources of our customs, is very laudable. But if you present medieval superstition and exaggeration as "historical accounts" then you are instilling the credulity in one place that you are eradicating in another.

Yeah, mostly I wanted to be honest with them about the source of our traditions, and inform them on how it's been transformed into a yearly festival of excessive marketing and conspicuous department store consumption. It's more that our tradition of secret giving began with Nickolaus of Myra, whose bones I actually ended up seeing while stranded for a day in Bari on my way to Greece. But, yes, Saint Nickolaus has been attributed with some pretty fantastic tales, which are most likely exaggerations and mythology.

I actually find the holly, mistletoe, pine tree decorations, and other northern European traditions more interesting.