To hate the now common usage of "santa"

[Creambun2]

Just this really. Santa is a vulgar Americanism.

What was wrong with father Christmas ffs.

No it hasn't always been santa in Scotland actually

I'm 59. I've lived in Scotland all my life .It has always been Santa.

The Santa threads are getting increasingly more bonkers.

What a cracking thread.

Highlights for me were
HarrietSchulenberg's essay on the difference between FC and Santa :-

Santa feels inflatable snowman, plastic tat, false celebration of a Christian festival (and yes it’s in the name regardless of early English winter celebrations). It conveys nothing but self indulgence and excess - not what Christmas is actually about.

quickly followed by this brilliantly withering riposte

Which role did Father Christmas play during Jesus' birth?

And this exchange which made me laugh out loud.
Have the 'it's all nicked from paganism' crowd arrived yet?

Fekko, I think they have got into a punch up with the...'but it's very name is CHRISTmas gang'

In answer to this I can’t think of a single song / advert / book or movie (apart from that one short and very English cartoon called Father Christmas) that refers to Father Christmas I give you this. I don't think the OP will like it.

I have the Christmas topic hidden because normally it bores the hell out of me. But I'm so glad that this one popped up in AIBU. Quite entertaining.

I forgot this one, which is rather lovely. It will also confuse all the "Father Christmas as a class indicator" lot since despite looking and sounding like an archtypical English posh boy and incorporating Prokofiev into it Greg Lake was from a very working class background.

The ignorance on this thread is astounding. No one in the US is preparing for Xmas yet because IT’S NOT EVEN THANKSGIVING! You can’t start knocking the Muricanisation of England until Black Friday. Which you weirdly stole for literally no reason at all, other than a love of cheap goods.

We didn’t steal Black Friday, what sort of shit is that??? It’s done by big multinational companies like Amazon who decided to start doing it over here so they could get more money.

The word crimbo makes me want to kill someone.

National Trust introduces ban on ‘Santa Claus’ in stately homes and historic buildings – because calling him Father Christmas is ‘more British’

I really wish organisations would stop confusing British with English. Santa/Santy have been almost universally used in Scotland/Ireland for generations - as this thread has demonstrated.

I'm throwing Odin into the mix

St. Nicholas is commonly linked to Odin, the ruler of Asgard, one of the major gods in Germanic mythology who was depicted as a white-bearded man with magical powers. However, Odin’s ties to Santa Claus may be more pronounced. The winter solstice, also known as Yule, was a time when Odin led a hunting party, known as the Wild Hunt, in the sky with an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir. The 13th century Poetic Edda said the mythical horse could leap great distances -- a trait reindeer possess. Children would leave their boots by the chimney filled with carrots and hay to feed Sleipnir. Legend has it that whenever Odin flew by he would leave gifts by their boots, as About.com noted.
After Christianity took hold, this practice was later adopted in relation to St. Nicholas. Children would leave their shoes on the windowsill or bedroom door on the evening of Dec. 5 for the saint to reward them with nuts, fruits and sweets, as CatholicCulture.org pointed out.



We say fa fa fa fa father Christmas fro childrens book

What is the origin of Black Friday? I’d never heard of it until a couple of years ago. (Genuine question not being cheeky)

To be fair DeepPile Tha National Trust is English and there is a separate National Trust for Scotland

Every time I hear something defined as “British” it’s almost certainly talking about England. Never Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

I am 73 and it was always Santa to me, my parents and grandparents. I was told it was a contraction of Saint Nicholas.
Father Christmas, Pere Noel, Noel Baba etc are European.

I thought St Nicholas was originally the Bishop of Myra in Turkey who secretly left dowries for poor girls. Certainly there is a Christmassy shrine to him there.

To be fair DeepPile Tha National Trust is English and there is a separate National Trust for Scotland

The National Trust isn't just English, it covers N Ireland and Wales too. And their own website refers to Mr and Mrs Claus

Has anyone yet pointed to the non-sequitur of the argument "it was Santa 50 years ago, so it can't be an American import"? 50 years ago, my friends, is not actually very long ago. Well after WW2 when American influence became strong in the UK. And the CocaCola advert that shaped the modern image of Santa is from 1931. So well beyond anybody's childhood memories of 50 years ago.

Of course the term doesn't have to be an Americanism: Saint Nicholas is the term used on the continent (which is how it got to the US).

As for the pagan argument, when did Odin/the Wild Hunt/the Green Man ever go around in a red costume and bring presents? And where is the evidence of any continuity of the wild hunt idea beyond the Middle Ages, or of any association of Santa with flying reindeer until the Coca Cola marketing dept got their hands on him?

There were personifications of Father Christmas in 17th C masques - just like there were personifications of virtually every other concept under the sun (Plenty, Virtue, the River Thames). But this was a dressed-up figure in a play, not somebody who went around off their own accord, and certainly nothing to do with present-giving. Very little to do with the current figure.

What’s so wrong with American imports anyway? The assumption or implication that it’s vulgar is pretty offensive. I take it that anyone thinking Americanisms are vulgar have never used anything American? Amazon, Coca Cola, any tv programmes or films, food products?

Gosh, It never ceases to amaze me the things that some MNetters get worked up about. Santa/ FC who gives a fuck?! It’s all just a bit of festive fun.

It’s always been Santa for me, 34 and Scottish.

Absolutely, Notreally. There is a snobbery which feels the need to rewrite history according to a hierarchy where British is best, only English British is really British, only Southern English is really English, and everybody's childhood took place in some fantasy land of cultural isolation.

incidentally, not only an English way of thinking. My DM is Swedish. She will absolutely insist that the traditions of her childhood are the genuine age-old traditions of the Swedish culture, even when it is perfectly easy to demonstrate either that they were new inventions or modern imports at the time or specific to her family. What's wrong with saying "we do this because we enjoy it"?

I’m Scottish and we never had Father Christmas - he sounds incredibly prim and upper class to my ears, Santa sounds just right!

@corythatwas absolutely right!

Scottish and had never heard Father Christmas in real life as a child.
Grandparents born in the 1920s all used Santa Claus all their lives too.
Father Christmas to me as a child was as Enid Blyton as “lashings of ginger beer” which is also never seen in real life.

There’s nothing wrong obviously with the English having their own term but the CONSTANT attacking of Scottish and Irish culture as “American” just because many migrants did go there is just painful.

This thread is very funny. Can’t believe I read the whole thing.