What's wrong with "Merry Christmas"?

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Christian Stubø
<pengolodh_sc at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter, "Goddlefrood" wrote:
> [snip]
> > (iv) Eight reindeers - Probably due to Odin's horse having 
> > had 8 legs. 
> 
> No.  The eight reindeer are due to the 1823 poem "An Account of a 
> Visit from Saint Nicolas", otherwise known as "The Night before 
> Christmas."  Reindeer have little or nothing to do with giftbringing 
> in Scandinavian Christmas tradition.  

Flying reindeer from upstate New York are a funny coincidence with
flying reindeer in Siberia -- this summer I read an article about the
Even people (related to the Evenki people, of whom I have heard)
believe their reindeer can fly and shamans ride the reindeer to
heaven. The Sami raise reindeer in Northern Scandinavia, and one TV
show about Santa Claus asserted that coming down the chimney came from
Sami semi-subterranean houses entered by climbing down a ladder from
the roof. Did the guy who really wrote The Night Before Christmas
(last year it was proved that it wasn't Clement Moore, it was some
other guy whose name I forgot) know a lot about Lapland or Siberia?

If I recall correctly, Sinte Klaus (dressed like a fighting bishop)
rode a magnificent horse and put gifts in the wooden shoes of good
children, while his servant, Black Peter, followed on a donkey and put
lumps of coal in the wooden shoes of the bad ones. I don't remember in
what country 'Kris Kringle' (Christ Child) gave the gifts. A news
scrap about archaeologists in Ohio digging up a Santa Claus figure
dressed in blue from 1850 stated that it was made by German
immigrants, in whose tradition Santa Claus wore blue. Did Germans tell
the same tale of Sinte Klaus that the Dutch did?