Why is santa called kris kringle

See comments. Santa Claus is someone who will remain in the hearts of children forever. He is the make-believe person who brings toys and other gifts to children at Christmas.

To grown-ups, he is a special symbol of good will and selfless giving. Santa Claus also has some other names: Saint Nicholas, St. Nick, Kris Kringle, Pelznickel. The Dutch believed Saint Nikolaas gave gifts to children. They honored this kindly saint with a yearly festival on December 6th. The English-speaking people who lived nearby greatly enjoyed Dutch festivals. And they brought the saint and the custom of giving gifts into their own celebration at Christmas time.

Nicholas he believed praying to any saint was against Scripture. Christkind was modified to Kriss Kringle in the s and became a popular nickname in some countries for Santa Claus. Nick and Kris Kringle evolved, but it still took a while for the current version of Santa Claus to develop.

Two New Yorkers in the 19th century had much to do with how we view Santa Claus today. Though some of his ideas were borrowed from folklore, he put it all together in what became a hugely popular poem. Even so, Santa Claus was still pictured in many different ways: from a rascally character wearing a blue, three-cornered hat to a man with a broad-brimmed hat wearing huge Flemish stockings. Christmas, the Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus, is celebrated in a variety of ways around the world.

Here are just a few examples:. Basic HTML is allowed. Your email address will not be published. Subscribe to this comment feed via RSS. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. The Christkind. When the person who gave the gifts changed, the date the gifts were given on changed too With the infant Jesus now doling out the gifts at Christmas, instead of St. Of course, the story of Christkindl sounds an awful lot like the story of Santa Claus to me Although Martin Luther intended the Christkindl to remind Protestants of the infant Jesus, in practice, the legend of the Christkindl ended up resembling Santa Claus more than the infant born in Bethlehem.

Hmm… I wonder if the Christkindl maintains a nice and naughty list, too? How did the story of the Christkindl arrive in America?

Like this: Like Loading What are you thinking? Cancel reply Enter your comment here Nicholas made his first inroads into American popular culture towards the end of the 18th century. In December , and again in , a New York newspaper reported that groups of Dutch families had gathered to honor the anniversary of his death. The background of the engraving contains now-familiar Santa images including stockings filled with toys and fruit hung over a fireplace.

Stores began to advertise Christmas shopping in , and by the s, newspapers were creating separate sections for holiday advertisements, which often featured images of the newly-popular Santa Claus. In , thousands of children visited a Philadelphia shop to see a life-size Santa Claus model.

In the early s, the Salvation Army needed money to pay for the free Christmas meals they provided to needy families. They began dressing up unemployed men in Santa Claus suits and sending them into the streets of New York to solicit donations. Those familiar Salvation Army Santas have been ringing bells on the street corners of American cities ever since.

It is Nast who gave Santa his bright red suit trimmed with white fur, North Pole workshop, elves and his wife, Mrs. Nicholas-inspired gift-giver to make an appearance at Christmastime. There are similar figures and Christmas traditions around the world. Christkind or Kris Kringle was believed to deliver presents to well-behaved Swiss and German children. Nicholas on his holiday missions. In Scandinavia, a jolly elf named Jultomten was thought to deliver gifts in a sleigh drawn by goats.

In Italy, there is a story of a woman called La Befana, a kindly witch who rides a broomstick down the chimneys of Italian homes to deliver toys into the stockings of lucky children.

In the United States, Santa Claus is often depicted as flying from his home to home on Christmas Eve to deliver toys to children. Stockings can be filled with candy canes and other treats or small toys. Santa Claus and his wife, Mrs.