BY Joyce DePauw

I had begun to write about a typical American Christmas, but I found that absolutely nothing is American about it. Our modern-day, all‑American Santa Claus is none other than a Christian bishop named Saint Nicholas, who, to the Italian children in the nineteenth century, brought candies. I hunted around, and here are some of the things I found most interesting.

Christmas started about 500 A.D. The exact date of Christ's birthday isn't known.

Many customs of Christmas are indirectly related with the Roman winter festival. The exchange of gifts, lighting candles, and the use of certain greens come from the Romans. They exchanged green branches for good luck and sent holly as a gift to one another. Other customs came from the Yule feast among the Angle-Saxons. The miniature nativity scene was displayed in Italy about the same time.

Also mistletoe, a sign of peace and good will among the Celtic priests, was adopted by the English.

The Christmas tree is a major part in the holiday season in many countries. In pre‑Christmas times, evergreen boughs often were a part of pagan winter ceremonies, and food offered to the gods was hung on trees in the forests, Norwegians decorated outdoor trees with nuts, cranberries, apples, and seeds. In Bavaria, in southern Germany, small trees are sometimes placed close to graves. Indoor trees first appeared during the Middle Ages in Germany where today small children do not usually see the tree until Christmas Eve. Sometimes nativity scenes are put under the trees.

Well, this is how our all-American Christmas came to be what it is today. I guess this is much more than only a nation‑wide holiday. I'd say it was a world‑wide holiday.