Happy Holiday!

[Tank]

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everybody here 

[xSilverPhinx]

Merry Xmas to all! 

[joeactor]

[Ecurb Noselrub]

May you all have a wonderful Christmas!

[Buddy]

[Recusant]

[Davin]

Happy holidays!

[Crow]

[youtube width=500]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwTRgDx7xJw[/youtube]

[Magdalena]

^^^
Oh, you two!





Are we exchanging gifts this year?

[OldGit]

Happy Crimbo to one and all!

[Recusant]

A map of gift-bringers in Europe, from here. I enjoyed learning about Joulupukki and Tió de Nadal. 

Also, Dave Wilton has been looking at seasonal words in his Big List lately.

Christmas, Xmas

wassail

yule

Santa Claus

carol

reindeer

egg-nog

Boxing Day

[Icarus]

The Nordic countries have an annual contest to claim the real Santa.  It is all about the location of Santa's home. The Finns claim that he resides in the Lapland town of Rovaniemi.  The town is just south of the arctic circle and it attracts  tourism that contributes 210 million Euros to the local economy.

The Swedes claim that the Finns are full of shit and that his home is in the central Sweden town of Mora.  Norwegians claim that Santa was born under a stone in Drobak on the Oslo fjiord. The Danes claim that the real Santa's home is on the distant Artic island of Greenland. Naturally Greenland is a Danish possession and Santa almost surely does his off season operations there. 

The Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians base their Santa on a mythological figure- a gnome known as "Tomte" or "Nisse" in the scandanavian languages. 

All this is in the spirit of friendly competition among the frozen nations.  It does not hurt that tourist money is spent by visitors to the claimed Santa homes. .........Well all except for the Danes. Nobody wants to visit Greenland except geologists and weather research people.

G85 can probably fill us in on some of the real details.

No matter where Santa has his home, I wish all my HAF friends the very best of holiday cheer.

[Magdalena]

Everything is ready, I'm just having a glass of wine while I wait for my guests. It just feels nice to be waiting here for them, with all of you...and my glass of wine. 

[Sandra Craft]

And for the Asmo, in case he's around:

[xSilverPhinx]