Did you spend 250 hours on your holiday card? Google did.

Can you imagine a team of five people spending over 250 hours on a holiday card? Just think how many people you’d have to send that card to in order to justify such an effort, not that you’d ever pony up that kind of labor just to spread holiday cheer.

But Google would. And did. Today, the search engine unveiled its brand new doodle, a holiday card of sorts—one for the entire world to enjoy. All you have to do to receive yours is click on over. And if you do, you won’t be sorry.

Katherine Rosman of the Wall Street Journal reports that Michael Lopez is in charge of Google’s doodles and as such was the point person on the enterprising project. Rosman writes: “For Google, the goal is to burnish its brand image and engage the legions of people who conduct more than a billion searches a day, without offending any of them.” This is undoubtedly the reason why there are so many images, 17 in all, which depict scenes from around the world ranging from St. Basil’s cathedral to a canal in Venice. When you click on a particular image, it automatically conducts a correlating search. Continue reading »

Tweet

0

Pin It

What have you told your kids about Santa?

Two days ago, Babble published a feature by Krista Pfeiffer, titled “In Our House, There’s No Santa Claus.”  So far it’s garnered 112 reader responses, both in support of and rallying against Pfeiffer.  (Jezebel has highlighted a few comments from both sides of the debate.)  In her piece, Pfeiffer argues that “encouraging my kids to be good in order to make Santa’s nice list… not only undermine(s) my authority, but it’s pure extrinsic motivation.”  Furthermore, Pfeiffer declares that “Santa Claus represents, for me, all that is not Christmas spirited: receiving instead of giving, greed instead of gratefulness, idle wanting instead of active contributing.”  (I can’t help but agree with Sadie Stein at Jezebel, who calls Pfeiffer out for her “superior” and “condemnatory” tone.) Continue reading »

Tweet

0

Pin It

Do they look happy to you?

I remember the last time my husband and I stood in line at the mall so our little girl could sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what she wanted for Christmas.  That was five years ago but the photo taken that day stayed on the refrigerator for years.  I just loved that picture.  With her beaming smile and great big eyes, the photo perfectly captured the excitement she felt at finally having some face time with Santa.

But according to a study by John W. Trinkaus, professor emeritus at the Zicklin School of Business, City University of New York, most kids don’t look like that when they sit on Santa’s lap.  In fact, most of them look like they couldn’t care less that they are meeting Santa face to face. Continue reading »

Tweet

0

Pin It

Sint and Piet hand puppets sent to us from Holland.

Much has been speculated about the negative ways in which divorce impacts children’s lives, but let’s for a moment look at the positive aspects of divorce, especially during the holiday season. My daughter not only has two bedrooms full of stuff she likes, she had two uniquely themed 5th birthday parties and will get to experience two Christmas mornings. On top of that, because her Dad is Dutch, she got a visit from Sinterklaas last night as well.

There’s a centuries-long tradition in the Netherlands of families exchanging gifts on Sinterklaasavond, which falls on December 5th every year, the day before the feast of Saint Nicholas. As you may know, Saint Nicholas is a historic figure, born in – get ready for it! – the year 270 AD. Saint Nicholas was the Bishop of Myra, in modern-day Turkey, who was known for leaving poor people secret gifts. The real Saint Nicholas does serve as the inspiration for our Santa Claus, but the Dutch Sinterklaas being celebrated today is not Santa Claus.   Continue reading »

Tweet

0

Pin It

When I was a growing up, my family celebrated Hanukkah.  There was no Hanukkah bush, nothing green and red ever passed through our front door, we were blue and white and latkes and candles and didn’t you know Santa wasn’t real anyway?  All the kids at my school knew this from at least kindergarten.  Then again, I went to a Jewish school so that part was easy.

So, you can imagine my confusion when I discovered that Santa Claus was also Saint Nicholas. People called him St. Nick! Saint as in SAINT as in a very religious person! But wasn’t Santa Claus about presents and not, you know, religion?

Of course I knew from TV that Jesus Christ was born on Christmas, but I also firmly believed, until I was 24-years-old, that Christmas fell each and every year on December 26th.

This is what happens when you grow up wrapped up in the warm embrace of a very specific community.  In my case, it was a lively and engaged Jewish community. I went to a Jewish school during the week, services on Saturday, my parents were friends with Jews, so of course I grew up to be completely obsessed with saints.  Really. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the biographies of Ethiopian Christian Saints and went off to graduate school to study the early Christian variety.

Continue reading »

Tweet

0

Pin It

A toy store truly became the coolest place on earth when it opened at 4 a.m. on Christmas Day, just so a mom could sneak in and replace all the toys that had been stolen from her home.

According to Reuters, the woman put her kids to bed on Christmas Eve then went to collect all the presents she’d hidden away for the big night. Continue reading »

Tweet

0

Pin It

Climate change deniers are calling for a massive boycott of Build-A-Bear Workshop.

So what did they do, send some teddy bears to the Obama kids? Sponsor a meeting in Copenhagen? Nah – the toy company put up a webisode on its site featuring Santa telling kids “global warming is a serious situation.”

That’s it. They admitted global warming exists. And they used Santa to send that message to kids. Continue reading »

Tweet

5

Pin It