[Squawk 8888]

Actually this could be a topic for a whole ‘nother thread- the modern Santa Claus is pretty much a composite character but some of our Christmas traditions can be traced back to the actions of St. Nicholas. The one that immediately comes to mind is the incident where he dropped a bag of money down the chimney of a poor family’s home.

[muawiyah]

St. Nicholas may have done that, but at the same time when the Sa'ami shaman came to your tipi for a visit, he climbed up to the top and tossed his bag of drugs, herbs, spices and mushrooms into the smokehole. He shortly followed after. When he left he climbed up the centerpole and went back out the smoke hole.

St. Nicholas may have done it once. If we can use Joe Stalin's murder of the shamen as a guide, there were at least 10,000 shamen across North Asia still doing that (even far beyond the Sapmai) as late as 1935. Imagine those shamen visiting every tribe member a couple of times per year, and you get an idea of how common that was.

The St. Nicholas stories are pretty clearly Christian inventions used to justify their co-option of the ancient Sa'ami traditions ~ sans their religious significance, of course.

BTW, it was still common in the late 1800s for Christmas decorations and Christmas cards to bear pictures of elves and red mushrooms with white dots.