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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We're Jewish and Santa comes to our house every year.  Santa is not really a Christian figure, just one appropriated by Christianity a long time ago, so we don't see any relationship between Santa and other religions.  I taught my child from an early age not to taunt other kids and to remember that not everyone celebrates holidays so it's best not to talk a lot about it at school.

It concerns me that OP thinks Santa is only for Christians, and makes sense that her kid might taunt other kids.  [/quote]
If your family enjoys the Santa tradition, I’m glad he visits you. Nobody else gets to dictate your household celebrations. However, your view on Santa is not widely shared. Santa is definitely associated with Christmas, and Christmas with Christianity.[/quote]

I disagree.  The majority of educated folks know that [b]Santa has nothing to do with Christianity[/b] and don't feel any obligation to be Christian while celebrating a secular Christmas.  Only Christians constantly whine about how everyone needs to put Jesus back into Christmas and how materialistic and secular it all is today, without realizing the irony of all of that being much older than Christianity itself.[/quote]
I mean, he's been pretty secularized, but it's just wrong to say he has "nothing" to do with Christianity.  Christmas is a Christian holiday, celebrating the birth of Christ.  Santa is based on a Christian saint.  Even if he's been turned into a secular cartoon, his origins are pretty clearly based in Christianity, and not everyone agrees that there are no religious aspects to either Santa or Christmas.  Not all Jews celebrate Christmas or "do" Santa, for example.  [/quote]

I'm guessing if non Jews started celebrating Hanukkah because 8 days of gifts is better than one some Jewish people would find that offensive. Choosing to celebrate one of the holiest days for a different faith because it's "secularized" even though the name of it has the name of their Savior IN the name of the holiday is a bit of appropriation. I'm an atheist but I can see why some Christians would not be happy with folks and yes I celebrate. I was raised a Christian and it is part of my family culture. Don't care what anyone else does but the inability of people to consider the other side of anything is disheartening. [/quote]

You have it the wrong way around.  Christmas traditions like trees, gifts, lights, and a guy on a flying sleigh who gives gifts to good children are all traditions that pre-date Christianity.  Many are part of the celebrations of pre-Christian religions.  They were deliberately and consciously appropriated by the Christian church, with a kind of "if you can't beat 'em, make them join you" mentality, as a way to combat what it saw as pagan tradition in a population it was actively trying to convert.  By not recognizing that appropriation, we simply take back what was always ours.[/quote]

Who was the guy flying on a sleigh giving out gifts, before Santa?[/quote]

Good point.  No One.  that story started with the poem "A night before Xmas"

Before that, supposedly a good Slavic king, named Nicholas, gave out gifts at Xmas and he became "Saint Nick"

The original gift giving idea supposedly came from the 3 wise men in the Bible, who came from afar, guided by a star, to bring gifts to the baby Jesus[/quote]

Sorry, that's incorrect.  A whole host of gods and folk figures from Greek to Slavic to Norse and Germanic mythologies flew across the sky and left gifts for children.  From Odin to Father Frost,  there is no shortage of them.  There were even plenty of reindeer around in pre-Santa mythology.  The poem referenced above came much, much later, and merely repeated and expanded on those folk beliefs, plus actually gave names to the reindeer.  It did not invent the idea.  Likewise, St. Nicholas (he was not Slavic, he was a Greek bishop in the 4th century, hundreds of years before the Slavs became Christian) was not the origin of most of Santa Claus - Santa has only his name (deliberately given to him by the early church in order to appropriate existing beliefs they saw as pagan) and the red clothing, which resembles a bishop.

In fact, almost nothing is known of the original St. Nicholas - all the stories of his gift-giving were written long after his death.  The conflation of a popular folk character with the saint was strategic.  As for the Slavs, they had their own stories about a guy with a sleigh full of gifts, and still do.  [/quote]

The Norse would celebrate the Wild Hunt, where the God Odin (or the All-Father) would hunt down trolls and other creatures as he gave gifts to children across settlements during Mid-Winter.

The winters in Northern Europe were dark and foreboding, and so it lent itself to the idea that Odin and his gang would ride across the winds, amid much howling and shrieking of the trolls and other creatures as they were hunted down by the party. Along the way, Odin – similar to and pre-dating Santa Claus – would send little gifts to the children he passed through the villages and towns during the Viking Age.

Odin could be seen riding on the winds, with his horse Sleipnir, the eight-legged child of the God Loki. He was the fastest and strongest horse in the world. Every year when the Midwinter sun came over the lands, it was said to be Odin and his party hunting down trolls and other nasty creatures. On this night in particular, Odin would leave gifts out for the children, and they in turn would leave a small parcel of food for Odin and of course a carrot or bits of hay for the horse Sleipnir.

Odin would hunt trolls on a 8 legged horse.

Father Frost (Russian: Морозко, Morozko) is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki (1855-63). Andrew Lang included it, as "The Story of King Frost", in The Yellow Fairy Book (1894).

A woman has a daughter, whom she loves, and a step-daughter, whom she hates. One day, the woman orders her husband to take her stepdaughter out into the winter wilderness and to leave her there to die, and he obeys, leaving her at the foot of a tree in the forest. Father Frost finds her there, and because the girl is polite and kind to him, he gives her a chest full of beautiful jewels and fine garments. Some time later, the stepmother sends the girl's father to retrieve her body for burial, and is enraged when he instead brings the girl back alive and happy and dressed in finery. Consumed by greed and envy, the woman orders her husband to take her own daughter to the same place, but when found by Father Frost the woman's daughter is rude and unkind to him, and he is inclined to punish rather than reward her. The father finds her frozen to death at the foot of the tree and carries her body back to her grief-stricken mother.

In the Grimm version, the girl is covered with gold and silver coins while the rude child is covered with cement, mud, flour, and pitch.

The origins of the character of Ded Moroz predates Christianity as a Slavic wizard of winter. According to some sources in Slavic mythology, Ded Moroz, back then also called Morozko or Ded, is a snow demon.

Ded Moroz is a legendary figure similar to Santa. Under the influence of Orthodox traditions, the character of Ded Moroz was transformed into Russian Santa. Since the 19th century the attributes and legend of Ded Moroz have been shaped by literary influences. The play Snegurochka by Aleksandr Ostrovsky was influential in this respect, as was Rimsky-Korsakov's Snegurochka with libretto based on the play. By the end of the 19th century Ded Moroz became a popular character.

I don’t know any greek or roman gods who rode sleighs across the sky, pulled by reindeer, who gave gifts to kids. What were their names? Yes, reindeer have existed… but flying reindeer seem uniquely attributed to Santa.

[/quote]

Greek gods rode chariots across the sky.  Gods tended to fly across the sky in a lot of different ways, mostly whatever way people used to travel, but in the sky.  The sleigh is a cold weather vehicle - I'm not sure, but I would hypothesize that there may be gods and folk characters using sleighs, for flying or otherwise, among the folktales and mythologies of peoples living in cold areas.  The reindeer was a common animal in Scandinavian mythology.  I don't know if any of them flew.  Current Santa is an amalgamation of beliefs and stories from many different places.  He's not a replica of any one character, but most of his important features can be traced back to something other than Santa.

[/quote]

So you have a theory some gods used a sleigh, but don’t know of any?

What specifically did flying reindeer do in other folktales and mythology and legends?

[/quote]

A quick Google search reveals that reindeer pull sleighs in the arctic, in accordance with the ancient traditions of the Sami people:

https://ethnobiology.org/forage/blog/s-mi-women-reindeer-herding-families-identity-tied-recognition-work-status

I don't think they got that idea from Santa.  They also dress the reindeer in bells for special occasions.  And yes, they have an ancient sun goddess who flies through the air on winter solstice, on a sleigh, carried by reindeer.

And that's not even the only flying reindeer god.  The Baltic Saule also traveled through the air with flying reindeer, and she was even known to drop bits of amber into chimneys.  Slavic peoples had a goddess with reindeer horns on her head, and her feast day was celebrated at winter solstice.  There are more.  Someone could write a dissertation on flying reindeer - actually, I'm pretty sure someone has.

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