The story of Santa Klaus

If you go to England you will find many people there who have never heard of Santa Klaus. Only the other day a leading London paper confessed that it could not understand why a...

Being the patron saint of such roving folk as sailors, merchants and travellers it was only natural that his body should have lain in perpetual peril from thievish hands. The re...

I have now told you all that is known of the story of Saint Nicholas during his lifetime and even after his death. I think you will agree that we have not yet gone very far in i...

Now I must own that at first sight it is difficult to explain how the Christ-child of the past--the Holy One whose birth is remembered and honored in that feast which we call Ch...

And now you may be tempted to ask, “What bearing has all this stuff about the pagan festivals upon the question of the identity of our old friend Santa Klaus?”

Forever memorable as an illustration of the manners of the French court in the fourteenth century stands a terrible accident that happened in Paris on the Christmas eve of 1393....

We have seen that most of the ceremonies that have attended or still attend the season of Christmas may be traced back to a period long before the birth of Christ.

The stories I have just told you are pretty enough and may amuse an idle half hour. But we must now pass from the region of myth into that of history and science.

We have now considered the far-off origins of the Christmas tree. We have decided that it is an adaptation of the Yggdrasil and other sacred trees of the pagan past to Christian...

Coleridge’s letter, as we have seen, was written in January 1826. In the succeeding December the English people were to obtain a nearer view of the Christmas tree. A great Germa...

In the Latin countries, that is to say, in Italy and the southernmost edge of France, Switzerland and Austria, our good old friend Santa Klaus rarely acts as the bearer of gifts...

As Twelfth Night, or Epiphany, is a day dedicated to the three Wise Men of the New Testament--the three kings of popular legend--it is only natural that one or more kings should...

St. Nicholas is practically forgotten to-day in Protestant England. But in the merrie England of olden times, before the Catholic religion had given way to Protestantism, he was...

The English, as I have said, have no Saint Nicholas, no Santa Klaus, no Chris-kinkle to act as a distributor of gifts on Christmas eve. They hail as the patron of the season a v...

“Why, gentlemen, do you know what you do? Ha! would you have kept me out? CHRISTMAS!--Old Christmas--Christmas of London, and Captain Christmas! Pray you let me be brought befor...

Some people still living (but they must be very aged people by now) may be able to remember the pantomime which was one of the great features of the Christmas holidays in early...

There is no country in Europe where Saint Nicholas is more honored than in Holland. Even before his festival arrives--during all the first five days of December--the shops in to...

Just as the Christmas tree was brought over to this country by early German immigrants so Saint Nicholas, or Santa Klaus, came here in the train of the Dutch settlers of New Yor...