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From the Morrill Memorial Library: Merry Christmas Eve
Lydia Sampson, Assistant Director
Growing up, I celebrated typical American Christmases in many ways. We put up a colorful tree with lights and garland, hung stockings over the fireplace, and put out cookies for Santa and carrots for his reindeer. Fortunately, I never ended up on the naughty list, so Santa showed up every year in the middle of the night leaving an abundance of gifts for me to find in the morning. Sure, being raised Christian I tried to keep in mind the “true meaning of Christmas,” but as a kid I was more excited about the toys and the annual Claymation specials on TV.
David Teniers the Younger,
The Twelve Days of Christmas No. 8, 1634-40
These days, British and American Christmases are by and large the same hodgepodge of tradition, with relatively minor variations. This Christmas Eve, for example, when millions of American kids put out cookies and milk for Santa, children in Britain will lay out the more adult combination of mince pies and brandy for the old man many of them know as Father Christmas. For the last hundred years or so, Father Christmas has been indistinguishable from the American character of Santa Claus; two interchangeable names for the same white-bearded pensioner garbed in Coca-Cola red, delivering presents in the dead of night. But the two characters have very different roots. Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children, was given his role of nocturnal gift-giver in medieval Netherlands. Father Christmas, however, was no holy man, but a personification of Dionysian fun: dancing, eating, late-night drinking and the subversio