Free Republic

<p>You may think you know Santa, but there's a lot more to the legend than a bag full of presents. What follows is a selective history of St. Nick and how he came to be known as the jolly round man in the iconic red suit.</p>

As a non-Christian with a deep affection for Christmastime, I've always felt a little left out around this time of year, but not in the way you might think. I've always felt a bit out of place with the venerable conservative tradition of denouncing the "war on Christmas." I should offer some background. When I was a kid, my parents cut out a jokey headline from a local newspaper that read "Santa Knows We're Jewish" and put it on a cardboard Christmas tree ornament. My father insisted I be raised Jewish. (I went to a Jewish day school and was...

Santa gets heave ho-ho Endangered species ... store Santas     By OLIVER HARVEYHO ho no! Santa is being given the boot by Britain’s store bosses. Not one shop in London’s Oxford Street is having a grotto this year. Instead many are using pop stars and TV celebrities to promote festive goods. The Ministry of Fun school, which trains Santas, has taken just 93 bookings across the UK this year — compared to 602 in 2001. Owner James Lovell said hard-nosed shop bosses believe grottos take up too much space. He added: “It’s sad that so many kids are...

One of the CIA's deepest and darkest secrets -- a classified report about a plot by the "Ebenezer Scrooge" terrorist group to attack Santa Claus and his reindeer -- has finally been revealed after almost 30 years. Researchers who recently uncovered the report say the joke memo warning about a potential terror attack on the North Pole, which had been classified "secret" for decades, speaks more about the U.S. government's obsession with keeping information from the public than it does of the black humour of the spies who wrote it. The saga of the top-secret Santa file began in 1974,...