World

Just as Santa Claus is commonly seen as the personification of Christmas, Old Father Time personifies the coming of the new year.

24 Dec

Just as Santa Claus is commonly seen as the personification of Christmas, Old Father Time personifies the coming of the new year.

Father Time is an elderly, usually bearded man.  He is usually depicted as carrying a new born baby, a scythe and an hourglass.  Interestingly, the Grim Reaper is most commonly found to be carrying a scythe and an hourglass too.
The baby that Father Time carries is meant to represent the coming new year.  Interestingly, some [...]

Santa’s grotto actually exists!

23 Dec

Santa’s grotto actually exists!

In the traditional sense of the word anyway.  A grotto (or Italian grotta) is defined as any type of natural or artificial cave  and Santa has got one for real, in Bari, Italy.
The Christian origins of Santa mostly derive from a middle-eastern man, born in the forth century, in the Lycian port of Myra (now [...]

All your favourite sites are belong to Konami!

22 Dec

Ahh,..the purest form of uber-geekiness. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. Try it now.

The reason we decorate Christmas trees with tinsel is because of mythical spiders!

17 Dec

The story goes like this -
There once was a very poor widow who could not afford to buy her children any Christmas gifts.  So that her children wouldn’t be completely emotionally scarred , she chopped down a Christmas tree and decorated it with nuts, paper chains, fruit and the like.  But the widow went to [...]

Between ‘97 & ‘99, in an attempt to offend fewer non-christians, Birmingham(UK) City Council promoted the idea of rebranding Christmas as ‘Winterval’.

15 Dec

The intention was to encourage people into the newly-rejuvenated town centre, with secular and interfaith events marking religious and other occasions during the relevant period.  There is even a Facebook campaign still in existence calling for Christmas to be banned
There were also protests in November 2009 when the city of Dundee (UK) promoted its celebrations [...]

At the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve 1914, firing from the German trenches suddenly stopped. A German brass band began playing Christmas carols…

12 Dec

Early, Christmas morning, the German soldiers came out of their trenches, approaching the allied lines, calling “Merry Christmas” (Fröhliche Weihnachten). At first the allied soldiers thought it was a trick, but they soon climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the German soldiers.
The truce lasted a few days, and the men exchanged presents [...]

In the UK, it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas day.

11 Dec

In a law passed in 1664 by Oliver Cromwell no less, mince pies and Christmas pudding were deemed ‘not puritan enough’.  The law was passed as a measure to combat gluttony which is of course, one of the ‘seven deadly sins‘.
In fact, Cromwell was all for banning any kind of celebration at Christmas.  Between 1647 [...]

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