how do you deal with differing christmas traditions? (i.e santa)

[Maveta]

ds is only 17mo so the time for really thinking about how to deal with this is a fair while away but it's got me thinking.

I want ds to have santa because I did and it's a tradition i want to carry on. But his cousins don't have santa, they have the 3 kings who all bring presents to MILs house on 6th Jan.

How to you broach the inevitable questions that come up when he realises Santa doesn't visit his cousins?

What kind of culture clashes have you experienced like this and how have you dealt with them?

my (not sure if ex at the moment??) G/f is eastern orthodox and their christmas is 2 weeks after ours, last year we had christmas with santa at the normal time, then we had eastern orthodox christmas at their time. in effect, christams for us lasted 4 weeks if you include new year like we did. her son only ever celebrated 7th Jan as christmas, but (he was 5 last year) but we explianed that different culturs and different placers in the world have different christmases as they are so many people, not everyone (children) can be seen at the same time (we said it much better than that , just can't find the words tonight!!)
each day we celebrated as it should be, my son at 4 was not confused by this at all as her son was not either. I suppose it depends on how religious the parents are and how close you all are in how you get around this all. I know eastern orthodox celebrates three kings etc but I also know that filipinos celebrate the magi (???). but whichever and the festivals/celebrations of around the whole christmas time will be different, I would hope that unless strictly observant, that you could get together and work out a joint celebration whereby you each help each other celebrate? my son really enjoyed having 2 christmases as did my (ex) G/f's son, 2 new yews were pretty good too!!