Monday, December 22, 2014

31 Things About Christmas-- Part 3: Milk and Cookies

11.  Stockings by the fireplace comes from this story.  A poor man with three daughters couldn't afford the dowry to get them married.  One night St. Nicholas dropped a bag of gold down the man's chimney so that the oldest daughter could get married and it fell into a STOCKING that was drying by the fire.

12.  One reason for MILK and COOKIES is because Dutch kids would leave food and drink for Sinter Klaus on his feast day.

13.  CARROTS are left for Santa's reindeer because in Norse mythology , people left hay and treats for Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir in hopes the god would stop by their home during his annual Yule hunting adventures.  Dutch kids adopted the tradition.

14.  The Santa Claus LOOK of today was created at an 1804 meeting of the New York Historical Society where member John Pintard handed out wooden cut outs of jolly old ST. NICK in front of a stocking filled with toys.

15.  Though Santa Claus has WORN blue, white and green in the past but the now ever-present red came from a 1930s Coca-Cola ad.

--OdinCooter

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