James Cooper
Appearances
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And then it came back into the rest of the world from America. So it's a very convoluted way that we get the name from St. Nicholas to Santa Claus. But yeah, on the 16th of November this year, Sinterklaas arrived on the Netherlands in his steamboat from Madrid, because Sinterklaas and Santa Claus are two very different people. And kids in
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
The Netherlands get their big presence on Nicholas Eve, which is the 5th of December. And yes, they believe that Sinterklaas lives in Madrid, not the North Pole.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
To less extent than people would think. The modern Santa is American invention. In the early 1800s, There was a poem called And Old Santa Claus with Much Delight was published in a poetry book for children in 1821 in New York. And that had the first illustrations of Santa and a reindeer. And then a couple of years later, in 1823, we have the famous poem, The Visit from St.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Nicholas, or Twas the Night Before Christmas. And that's when we learned about the reindeer. And he was described in that as a jolly old elf. When printing and magazines came along in the later 1800s, especially Harper Collins and things like that, we got the illustrations from Thomas Nast, which developed him into the much chubbier, tubbier, plumpy one that we think of as Santa today.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And back then he wore lots of different colours. But red and white was a good color for printing. It showed out well on magazine stands, which is one of the reasons why we get red and white. And also St. Nicholas wore red and white bishop's robes. So that's the connection goes all the way back to there. Coke picked up that he was already red and white and so used it.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
But he was red and white long before Coke came along in the 20s and 30s.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
That was from Towards the Night Before Christmas in 1823.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
before that he always arrived on a horse and it was really because um the reindeer you had some people drawing reindeer up in um the northern states in the snowy states and also up in uh norway and sweden it's thought that um Clark Moore drew some of the inspiration from Nordic traditions of the sleighs over there, which are pulled by reindeer to bring the reindeer into the poem.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And that's where we get the reindeer from. Although, of course, Rudolph only arrived in 1939 for Montgomery Ward department stores when a book was written about him. And then the cartoon was made in 48. And we have the famous song in 49.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
That's a good old British tradition, and that was invented in the same year that A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was published, which was 1843. Christmas cards were invented by a man called Sir Henry Cole. He was one of the founding members of the Victoria and Albert Museum over here in London. And he also helped set up the earliest UK post office.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And he invented and introduced a new cheaper form of postage stamp. So he got a friend of his called John Horsley, an artist, to design him the first Christmas card, basically to show off that you could use this cheaper penny postal service.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
It was kind of a marketing toy to show that he'd got this new way of cheaper postage and he could send out these cards to his family and friends to wish them a Merry Christmas. And it really took off from there. And then when cheaper printing came in, in the 1860s and 1870s, and the cost went even cheaper, then Christmas cards sort of blossomed around the world.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Yeah, no, I think they're on the way out, frankly. I think five, 10 years time, Christmas cards, certainly in the UK will be a thing of the past because one, postage is so expensive these days. And two, we just have other means of communication. They were often a time when families would catch up once a year, the traditional family newsletter of what's been happening through the year.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
But now we have email and WhatsApp and social media that we're in much more close communication with lots of people all over the world these days.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Yeah, again, they're an American thing because they come from Mexico. The poinsettia, it was made widely known because of a man called Joel Roberts Poinsett. And that's why we called them poinsettias. And he was the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico in 1825. He had some greenhouses on his plantations in South Carolina.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
He visited Mexico and saw these interesting plants growing that were beautiful colors around Christmas. And so he got some of the plants and took them back to his plantation and grew them in South Carolina and then sent them out around America to his family and friends, kind of like early Christmas cards in a way.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
He sent them to John Bartram in Philadelphia, who was a big botanical name in Philadelphia. And that's where they became. They really bloomed into popularity as a Christmas plant because they were something again with the reds and the greens that were already associated with Christmas that they just really fitted with Christmas decorations.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Well, thank you very much for having me. It's always fun to do these sorts of things.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
The earliest Christmas trees had red apples put on them. And we have red round baubles today because when glassblowers first made decorations, they made them to look like apples because that's what people were used to putting on their trees.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Yeah, the short answer is no one really knows. The long answer is it's complicated. I'll try and do my best to explain. You might have heard some people say it's because we took it from the Romans. That kind of doesn't really fit if you look really at the evidence. The earliest records of people trying to find out when to celebrate the birth of Christ was actually to do with his death.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Because in the early church, the early Christians, there was kind of a belief that you are important people, especially prophets. And so especially the son of God was born and died on the same day. And they were trying to work out when Jesus died. And they came up with the date.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
of the 25th of March as a good consensus date because there were various dates in and around that time, but they chose the 25th of March. And it changed from the belief that you were born and died on the same day to you were conceived and died on the same day. So if you then put nine months onto the conception of Jesus being on the 25th of March, you get his birth on the 25th of December.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Now that happened to coincide with several other midwinter festivals, so it worked quite well, but the earliest evidence seems to be that it was actually the early church working out the death of Jesus rather than anything to do with his birth, which is kind of surreal, but there we go.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Okay, yeah. The earliest Christmas trees seems to have actually come from trees that were paraded around towns in the early Middle Ages as part of what were known as paradise trees or miracle trees. There were plays put on outside churches traditionally on Christmas Eve telling the story from creation up to the time of Jesus, kind of like an old version of Handel's Messiah.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
basically, and to drum up support and interest in the plays. And they would carry around branches of apple trees or just dead, you know, not the fir trees as we think of them today, but branches of trees or frames of trees. And they were decorated with apples traditionally because they represented the Garden of Eden. And so the earliest trees had red apples put on them.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And then when trees became popular as an indoor custom, firstly in northern Germany, and people started decorating fir trees, they still traditionally put things like apples on them. And we have red round baubles today because when glassblowers first made decorations, they made them to look like apples because that's what people were used to putting on their trees.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Yeah, they were the ones that sort of did the first big introduction, certainly into the States. They came over from Germany, from Bavarian glassblowers. And you also had things like gingerbread that were put on trees, shapes cut out of bits of paper, stars and angels and things like that. But yeah, the first commercial ornaments came in the way of glass blown ornaments.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And the big ones were from the Walrus.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Yeah, indeed. But Christmas trees didn't really become a thing in the US until the 1850s onwards. Before that, you would have some of the German and Dutch immigrants that would have had trees, but they were looked on as a very unusual custom. They only came into the UK then. predominantly in the 1840s.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
The earliest tree in the UK was from one of the royal family, Queen Charlotte, who was the German wife of King George III. She put up a yew tree in one of the lodges at Windsor Castle in 1800. It's a children's party. But Queen Victoria and her German husband, Prince Albert, really popularised the Christmas tree in the UK. And in 1848,
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
there was a drawing published of the royal tree at Windsor in one of the big London newspapers and that sort of became the ignition of the popularity of trees in the UK and then in December 1850 that same drawing but with some early Photoshop going on because they took out Prince Albert's moustache and swapped the, took off Queen Victoria's tiara to make it look more homely and American
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And that was published in 1850 in Philadelphia. And that's when Christmas trees started to become popular in America because they were seen as sort of the fashionable British thing to do.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Yeah, well, the first ones were much smaller than we have today. They might have just been a branch or part of a tree. And they were often put on tables, on tabletops. And you'd traditionally, some of the earliest ones from Germany, they would have sort of your traditional sort of Christmas village was put under a little Christmas scene there.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And then people started, when gift giving became more popular in the late Victorian period, it became a place that you could put your presents. And then bigger trees came along and they became put on the floor, and you got it from that.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
No, most of them are pre-tree. Basically, since people have been celebrating the winter solstice, which is the mark of in December the 21st, December the 22nd, the shortest day of the year, having greenery in your house, sort of reminded you that winter wouldn't last forever and that spring would come.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And there's some thought that some greenery plants, like some of the spruces and some of the firs, actually have anti-insect and anti-fungal properties to them. So if you're living in a cold, drafty house with lots of fleas and things, actually having those strewn around on the floor would also make it smell nice, but they could help keep some of the bugs at bay, which would be quite nice.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And what about holly? holly in the Middle Ages became to represent the crown of thorns that Jesus had when he died and in Scandinavia the translation can be the Christ thorn with the red berries being the blood of Christ ivy was given the symbol at the similarity of that it has to cling to something to live so Christians needs to cling to God And then wreaths came farther back from that.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Back in the Roman times, they had wreaths given at the Olympic Games and sporting events. And so they were a sign of victory. So an everlasting life because they go round and round and round. So that, again, was given a new meaning of the Christmas wreath became a symbol of everlasting life and sort of the turning of the year and things like that.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
For most people, the late Victorian period. For the rich, throughout history. Back in pre-Christian times in the Saturnalia festivals, there was an element of gift-giving, but that's sometimes claimed as that's where we get gift-giving from, but it was very different to what we'd think of as gift-giving.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
It was more that you would actually give a bit of greenery to someone, which I think if you rocked up with a branch of holly in your hand at someone's house this Christmas, I don't think they'd be particularly happy with it.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
um so but i mean certainly royalty um wanted gifts throughout history you know it was a sign of um often your the actual your actual prosperity that you would give gifts to the royals and to people above you to try and win favor that was you you gave gifts to get something in return um you know royal favor and prestige and things it was only when um
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
commercial printing and commercial goods and toys especially became more widely made in the late Victorian period, that it became a holiday for everyone to exchange presents.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Yeah, well, I mean, the Christmas Carol was published in 1843. So that's five years before the Christmas tree became popular in the UK. So that's why there's no tree mentioned in the book. There is greenery, but it's just hanging around the house and being decorated on top of things like paintings and mirrors and things like that, rather than a big...
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
sort of centerpiece yeah and there is no gift giving it was a much more quiet celebration and it lasted it started on december the 25th and your christmas celebrations lasted until december the 5th sorry january the 5th which was epiphany eve for the 12 days of christmas that was when you had your christmas
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
feasting and christmas holidays you had advent before christmas which was a much quieter time and a religious time after the industrial revolution when people were working in factories rather than in out in farms in towns and villages you generally had christmas off but then the bosses wanted you back at work as soon as christmas holiday was over so
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
You also then started to get what we associate with Christmas now happening in December. But before the sort of mid-1800s, it all happened after Christmas, between Christmas and the start of January.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
Sure. Well, the original Santa was a man called Nicholas, and he became St. Nicholas. And that's where we get the name Santa Claus for. That went through a few changes in its own. First of all, Nicholas...
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
was a bishop who lived in the fourth century in a place called myra in asia minor which is now in turkey back then it was part of greece he was a christian and he was orphaned at a fairly young age but he was very rich and he was known for his generosity and gift giving
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And one of the most famous stories about Nicholas is that there was a family in the village that he lived that had three daughters and they were a very poor family and the daughters couldn't afford dowries. So that would basically mean that they couldn't get married. So the daughters would have had to go into prostitution.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
So as he was a kind man, Nicholas dropped a bag full of gold either down the chimney or through the window. And if it went down the chimney, it fell into a stocking. And if it goes through the window, it fell into a pair of shoes. And you either get presents now in stockings or shoes, depending on what part of the world you live in. And he did this for the first two daughters.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And the father wondered who was given these kind gifts. And he finally caught up with St. Nicholas and told everybody about his generosity. And the story of St. Nicholas's generosity traveled around Europe, especially northern Europe, into parts of Germany, France, and especially in the Netherlands and Belgium. And St. Nicholas became known as Sinterklaas.
Something You Should Know
The Origins of Christmas Traditions & A Simple Way to Achieve Important Goals
And in the Netherlands and Belgium and other parts of Europe, Sinterklaas is still separate from Santa, even though his name is derived from Sinterklaas, because Sinterklaas came with American settlers and Dutch American settlers over to America and Sinterklaas. English and Irish and other American settlers couldn't pronounce Sinterklaas, so they turned it into Santa Claus.