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The LowdownCelebrating Nikolaus in Germany Published: 4 Dec 09 10:13 CETOnline: http://www.thelocal.de/lifestyle/20091204-15915.html Each December 6, German children celebrate Nikolaus. Why does the Santa look-alike come so early and why do all the children place their shoes outside their front doors on the evening before? The Local has the lowdown. Is Nikolaus the same as Santa Claus? Though they have similar outfits, Nikolaus is not to be confused with Santa Claus, who Germans call the Weihnachtsmann, or Father Christmas. They are two different people. In fact, many religious families try to focus more on Nikolaus earlier in December to insure that...

CNA STAFF, Dec 6, 2009 / 04:47 am (CNA).- Today, December 6, the faithful commemorate a Turkish bishop in the early church who was known for generosity and love of children. Born in Lycia in Asia Minor around the late third or fourth century,  St. Nicholas of Myra is more than just the inspiration for the modern day Santa. As a young man he is said to have made a pilgrimage to Palestine and Egypt in order to study in the school of the Desert Fathers. On returning some years later he was almost immediately ordained Bishop of Myra, which...

Democrats Work On Multibillion-Dollar Jobs Package Lawmakers say they're moving fast to get a job-creation bill to Obama by January. It's unclear how much of the effort would be funded with deficit spending. Peter Nicholas November 26, 2009 Reporting from Washington - Troubled by the rising jobless rate, President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress are assembling a new jobs package that would devote billions of dollars to projects meant to put people back on payrolls in 2010 and keep them working. Discussions over the scale of the bill are fluid, but lawmakers said the intent was to move...

As the Russians vote in a poll on a national television station to choose the greatest Russian, Stalin and Nicholas II jostle for the crown. This seems strange. Stalin killed 25 million and sent 28 million through his Gulag camps while, during his own disastrous reign, Nicholas II displayed brutal insensitivity and political ineptitude, faced two revolutions, lost two wars, his throne and his life. In the BBC Great Britons poll, this game was won by Churchill. Charles I, our equivalent of Nicholas II, didn't appear; Henry VIII, the English Stalin, was No 40; Cromwell, our Lenin, was tenth but...

The ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew I, after years of insistence, was finally given the possibility to celebrate mass inside of what is, according to the State, only a museum. A saint which is unknown in Turkey, but is origin of Santa Claus. Istanbul (AsiaNews) – Since 99 % of Turkey is Muslim, Christmas is not an official holiday, though it is not prohibited. For the few Christians, December 25th is a regular day in which they go to school or to work and are then left with no choice but to celebrate either in private or in the few available churches....

From Myra

A Maine couple was ordered held Monday on $100,000 bond each after police said they became so infuriated their 19-year-old daughter was pregnant, they tied her up, loaded her into their Lexus and headed to New York to force her to get an abortion. Real estate developer Nicholas Kampf, 54, and his wife, Lola, 53, of North Yarmouth, Maine, were arrested at a shopping center in Salem on Friday after their daughter, Katelyn, escaped by persuading her parents she needed to use the restroom and called police. They were arraigned Monday on kidnapping charges. The alleged abduction began with an...

(AP)— A longtime suburban mayor was arrested Thursday on federal charges of steering business to a friend's insurance agency in return for bribes over almost two decades. Nicholas Blase, mayor of Niles for 45 years, was arrested as he left his house on his 78th birthday. According to court documents, Blase threatened to withhold liquor licenses and business licenses from restaurant owners unless they bought insurance from the agency once owned by his late friend Ralph Weiner and now run by Weiner's sons. The fraud began at least 17 years ago, an FBI affidavit said. "Businesses were being pushed to...

NEW YORK For the second time in less than a week, The New York Times today admitted to a serious error in a story. On Saturday it said it had misidentified a man featured in the iconic "hooded inmate" photograph from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Today it discloses that a woman it profiled on March 8 is not, in fact, a victim of Hurricane Katrina--and was arrested for fraud and grand larceny yesterday. As it did in the Abu Ghraib mistake, the Times ran an editors' note on page 2 of its front section, along with a lengthy news...

Bishop Nicholas of Myra: Legends and sources The Legend of Bishop Nicholas of Myra: A telling by Eldrbarry: Lots of people think that St. Nicholas is just another name for Santa Claus. After all, Santa is also called Father Christmas, and Kris Kringle, and other names. Actually, Santa Claus is itself a mispronunciation of the Dutch SinterKlass which was their way of saying St. Nicholas. But behind all these name is a boy who actually lived in what is now Western Turkey and what was then Lycia in the Fourth Century, about seventeen hundred years ago. His name was...

Response to "Bush should support genocide pact" by Nicholas Kristof, NY Times, 9-26-2005 by Dennis Fishel If anyone ever asks me to run for president, I'm not going to know whether to laugh or cry. Not that I have much to worry about, you understand; retired mailmen-turned-novelists aren't normally on the candidate short list. Still, given that the media voodoo dolls of George W. Bush look like pin cushions these days, it can't hurt for any of us to have an escape plan should our friends and cohorts unaccountably decide we might look good in Oval. When the dogs at...

Please pray for 4 year old Nicholas. My son and his wife just called from Pa and a friends son was hit by a car. He was hit on July 16th and had surgery today. He has a broken collarbone, broken femur, broken ribs and a bruised lung all on his left side. He also has stitches in his left arm and is on a respirator because of the bruised lung. He's been taken off pain medication to prevent a drug induced coma. He's also restrained. He has 2 rods in his leg holding his left femur together.

Dear, oh dear! Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist, laments, “the climate for freedom of the press in the United States feels more ominous than it has for decades.” He urges vociferous protest and a federal shield law for journalists—this because two journalists have been ordered to jail for refusing a judge’s order to reveal their sources. Both hacks are free pending appeals. Although I was in Albania for a short visit 25 years ago, I was unaware that freedom of the press was about to be curtailed in the Land of the Free. Kristof admits that judges do...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

LONDON - Nestled in cellars tunneled deep into a Crimean mountainside, they survived revolution, war and decades of communism. Hundreds of bottles of wine selected for the pleasure of Czar Nicholas II and preserved on the orders of Josef Stalin were auctioned by Sotheby's in London on Friday — the latest in a slew of Russian collectibles being snapped up at ever-rising prices. Several dozen Russian and European collectors gathered at Sotheby's showrooms to bid on bottles, some more than 150 years old and valued at several thousand dollars, from the imperial Massandra winery near Yalta on Ukraine's Black Sea...

Read more on American celebrations here: St. Nick's Day can be a nice little surprise Like many ancient traditions, the history of St. Nick's is debated. Some say St. Nick's Day is a decidedly German observance. Others say it is Spanish or Dutch. What is known is that St. Nicholas lived in the fourth century. He was a Christian prelate and the patron saint of Russia. Nicholas was a native of Patara, in the ancient district of Lycia in Asia Minor (now Turkey). He became archbishop of the metropolitan church in Myra, Lycia. How he came to be so...