Where's the big, fat, jolly one from?

whiskeyman

Nope, I don't mean Mary Harney... (oooh, nasty!).

Where did you grow up thinking (and still think *cough*) Santa is from?
Where did you address your letters asking for the latest Action Man or My Litte Pony? (odd papery things before the days of emails yee young techy folk).

I know it differs according to tradition:

Santa's Wiki entry wrote:

His home is usually given as either the North Pole, in northern Canada, Korvatunturi in Finnish Lapland, Drøbak in Norway, Dalecarlia in Sweden, or Greenland, depending on the tradition and country. Sometimes Santa's home is in Caesarea when he is identified as Saint Basil. L. Frank Baum placed his home in The Laughing Valley of Hohaho. In the original Dutch tradition, Sinterklaas lives in Spain and is accompanied by a great number of black servants, called 'Zwarte Pieten', which means Black Petes.

T'was always the North Pole for me.

(Just wondering, you think we need a breakaway Chrimbo forum to deal with invasion of such threads to AH?)

MrJoeSoap

North Pole, aye.

Crucifix

North pole here too.

_blank_

Yep, North Pole.

Huggles

Lapland...

Andrew 83

North Pole

Ruu_Old

TheGooner wrote:

Lapland...

Yep, for me too.

Mossy Monk

where they make Coca Cola. as a child i was informed that people were told Santa is from the North Pole so people woiuldnt try and find him

SpitfireIV

Yeah, North Pole. Who voted space??

Actually what address did ye use on your letters then? Mine was always just 'Santa Clause, North Pole', seemed to reach him fine.

eamoss

North Pole but I taught that Lapland was the name of the town in the North Pole :rolleyes:

RobertFoster

Turkey originally. His workshop is in the North Pole though.

Guy:Incognito

whiskeyman wrote:

Nope, I don't mean Mary Harney... (oooh, nasty!)

thats crazy, I only clicked on this thread to reply "actually, where IS Mary Harney from" lol, it's strange how many different people probably automatically thought of her when looking for a witty reply.:D

Karoma

(Just wondering, you think we need a breakaway Chrimbo forum to deal with invasion of such threads to AH?)

See: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=853

iFight

Lapland in the north pole too

Dave!

I hate you, you didn't even gimme a CHANCE to mention Mary Harney! :mad:

But then, she's not very jolly, is she?

Unpossible

for me it was the north pole. But I have had drunken finns try to convince me that the whole North Pole thing is a conspiracy. Cant remember who was repsonible for it or why, but then Im used to listening to finns giving these kinds of stories.

Ciaran500

Graceland

byte

North Pole for me.

DMC

whiskeyman wrote:

Nope, I don't mean Mary Harney... (oooh, nasty!).

Deep thought moment...... can Mary Harney be jolly? Has anyone ever seen her in a state of jollity?

MrJoeSoap

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38362000/jpg/_38362973_mary_harney_pa150.jpg

Jolly enough I spose.

biko

I voted the Pole but someone I spoke to recently said the Santa we have today is a fabrication by Coca Cola, sorry kids if I burst your bubble

YORE MA!

... er ...

Wasn't he originally meant to be from Hungary or something?

MrJoeSoap

biko wrote:

I voted the Pole but someone I spoke to recently said the Santa we have today is a fabrication by Coca Cola, sorry kids if I burst your bubble

Wasn't it that he was supposed to have been made red by Coca Cola? I still don't think its true...

Capt'n Midnight

Outside the anglo-saxon world the answer is Other

and in Italy she isn't big, fat, and not as jolly
in Holland he comes from spain and is had very dark/black skin

actually he comes from some wherevery HOT - read this http://www.av1611.org/othpubls/santa.html

MrJoeSoap

MrJoeSoap wrote:

Wasn't it that he was supposed to have been made red by Coca Cola? I still don't think its true...

Yes. The idea of Santa Clause has been around for hundreds of years in many cultures. Yet it was Coca Cola that came up with the modern day image of the one we know now. It was done in the 1950's.. which is interesting because on the latest ad by Coke, the very first date on the calender is 1950 -- which is when he was first created.

Anyways, heres the Snopes article on it.

SpitfireIV

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

in Holland he comes from spain and is had very dark/black skin

I think its Sinterklaas over there, his helpers are called 'Black Petes', ie they're colored miniture people (dont know if it would go down well over here now, might be a bit racial, I know there has been trouble over there about it)

Mossy Monk

CroppyBoy1798 wrote:

they're colored miniture people (dont know if it would go down well over here now, might be a bit racial, I know there has been trouble over there about it)

depicting black people working sadly is a racist issue for some

world is gone ****ing mad

SpitfireIV

Well them Black Pete's are sort of like his slaves, or at least they were in bygone days, perhaps they have a higher status nowadays in this modern world.

jester77

I thought it was North Pole as well until I vistited him just outside of Rovaniemi in Lapland!

Unpossible

until I vistited him just outside of Rovaniemi in Lapland!

I know the place, its a giant overpriced shopping centre that sells nothing but christmas stuff (no surprise I guess). I would have gotten a picture with the big fella until I found out the prices, some students in our group were shelling out euros for a cert acknowledging that they reached the artic circle, the thing looked like it was just made up in word a few minutes before hand.

Maybe I just expected more from it (plus we visited in late november just as the first snow was comming), bah humbug

rubadub

How old are the people saying lapland? I never heard of lapland growing up, seems to be a very recent thing, great scam by the country, little heard of and an odd sort of name, must generate huge amounts of tourism. There was no question it was the north pole when I was growing up.

I have heard other stories about the origin, drug related. There is a hallucinogenic mushroom called the fly agaric (different to the ones recently banned, this one is still legal). The mushroom is the common toadstool seen in cartoons, very large with a red cap with white spots and white stem. It was said this is where the colouring came from (also rumoured to be the reall red apple in the garden of eden which some translations say came from a fruitless tree- i.e mushrooms, drug taking being the original sin).
Anyways the agaric grows in cold climates, a lot are in siberia (close to the north pole). In siberia the mushroom is eaten by locals, reindeers are particularly fond of it! Now for the sick bit, when you eat fly agarics the active drug muscimol passes through your system intact, so people would drink their urine to keep the buzz going! poor people used to call to the houses of richer users with bowls to collect their piss. Festivals were had that would go on an on, people recycling their piss over and over. The mushroom itself contains chemicals which can make you sick, so the urine is actually a purer high. People used to feed the mushrooms to reindeer and collect their piss after they had taken the nasties out.

The effect of the drug is to make you see things dimensionally wrong, things can be big or small, (again alice is wonderland is rumoured to be based on fly agarics, so is the whole elves and giant folklore). So santa was red & white, kept a load of reindeers and had little elves working for him. Santa is really getting wasted of rudolphs piss and imagining be is flying.

Sad Professor

northpole too.

space... lol

Bob the Builder

NorthPole, then lapland, then NorthPole, then, etc....
It didn't matter where he was from... he was santa, he came at christmans, etc...that was good enuf 4 me!

biko

rubadub wrote:

How old are the people saying lapland? I never heard of lapland growing up, seems to be a very recent thing, great scam by the country, little heard of and an odd sort of name, must generate huge amounts of tourism. There was no question it was the north pole when I was growing up.

I have heard other stories about the origin, drug related. There is a hallucinogenic mushroom called the fly agaric (different to the ones recently banned, this one is still legal). The mushroom is the common toadstool seen in cartoons, very large with a red cap with white spots and white stem. It was said this is where the colouring came from (also rumoured to be the reall red apple in the garden of eden which some translations say came from a fruitless tree- i.e mushrooms, drug taking being the original sin).
Anyways the agaric grows in cold climates, a lot are in siberia (close to the north pole). In siberia the mushroom is eaten by locals, reindeers are particularly fond of it! Now for the sick bit, when you eat fly agarics the active drug muscimol passes through your system intact, so people would drink their urine to keep the buzz going! poor people used to call to the houses of richer users with bowls to collect their piss. Festivals were had that would go on an on, people recycling their piss over and over. The mushroom itself contains chemicals which can make you sick, so the urine is actually a purer high. People used to feed the mushrooms to reindeer and collect their piss after they had taken the nasties out.

The effect of the drug is to make you see things dimensionally wrong, things can be big or small, (again alice is wonderland is rumoured to be based on fly agarics, so is the whole elves and giant folklore). So santa was red & white, kept a load of reindeers and had little elves working for him. Santa is really getting wasted of rudolphs piss and imagining be is flying.

Anyway kids, stay away from the fly agaric. It will make you write posts like this

North Pole, but I used to be incredibly confused when Zig & Zag went to Lapland every Christmas.

thelordofcheese

Santa lives in space, as shown by Invader Zim

Mr. Slushy: But Zim and Dib were wrong that day. Santa wasn't destroyed, Santa lives on...
Small Child: In the hearts, and minds, of us all? [giggles]
Mr. Slushy: NO! IN SPACE! GATHERING POWER! And every Christmas he returns to Earth, and that's why we all live in this protective dome! [alarm sounds] Looks like Santa's here! RAISE THE SHIELDS, CHILDREN!