Santa jokes – Find the punchlines.

answers: 1-k 2-e 3-j 4-c 5-a 6-g 7-h 8-b 9-l 10-d 11-i 12-f

It’s that time of year when children look forward to a stocking full of presents – but the first international academic “Santa survey” shows many adults also wish they still believed in Father Christmas and some had felt betrayed when they discovered the truth.

The study also shows the threat of being on Santa’s naughty list doesn’t work for many children, and many youngsters continue to pretend they believe in Father Christmas even when they know he doesn’t exist.

Psychologist Professor Chris Boyle, from the University of Exeter, asked people around the world to tell him how they changed their minds about Santa, and if learning that he isn’t quite as he seems had affected their trust in their parents.

Professor Boyle received 1,200 responses from all around the world to his The Exeter Santa Survey, the only international study of its kind, mainly from adults reflecting on their childhood memories.

Interim findings show:

– 34 per cent of people wished that they still believed in Santa with 50 per cent quite content that they no longer believe

– Around 34 per cent of those who took part in the survey said believing in Father Christmas had improved their behaviour as a child whilst 47 per cent found it did not

– The average age when children stopped believing in Father Christmas was 8.

– There are significant differences between England and Scotland

– The mean age when people stop believing in Father Christmas was 8.03 for England and 8.58 in Scotland.

– There was a difference in attitudes between England and Scotland, as to whether it is ok to lie to children about Santa – more people in Scotland than in England said it was ok to lie to children about Santa.

– A total of 65 per cent of people had played along with the Santa myth, as children, even though they knew it wasn’t true.

– A third of respondents said they had been upset when they discovered Father Christmas wasn’t real, while 15 per cent had felt betrayed by their parents and ten per cent were angry.

– Around 56 per cent of respondents said their trust in adults hadn’t been affected by their belief in Father Christmas, while 30 per cent said it had.

– A total of 31 per cent of parents said they had denied that Santa is not true when directly asked by their child, while 40 per cent hadn’t denied it if they are asked directly.

– A total of 72 per cent of parents are quite happy telling their children about Santa and playing along with the myth, with the rest choosing not to.

Professor Boyle said: “During the last two years I have been overwhelmed by people getting in touch to say they were affected by the lack of trust involved when they discovered Santa wasn’t real.

“It has been fascinating to hear why they started to believe he is fictional. The main cause is either the accidental or deliberate actions of parents, but some children started to piece together the truth themselves as they became older.

“As much as this research has a light-hearted element, the responses do show a sense of disappointment and also amusement about having been lied to.”

One survey participant described how they had caught their parents drinking and eating what had been put out for Santa and the reindeer aged ten. An 11-year-old was woken up by their “tipsy” father dropping presents.

Many parents made basic errors which their young children picked up on immediately. One respondent recognised a present given to her sister from Santa as having been hidden in their parents’ room in the weeks before Christmas when she was seven. One participant found their letters to Santa in their parents’ room and another noticed Santa and their father had the same handwriting.

The “Mom and Dad” who signed their names in a book put in a stocking from Santa no doubt felt silly when their seven-year-old realised why the inscription was there. The parents of a child who found shop price tags on their presents from Father Christmas may have felt the same.

It wasn’t just parents who inadvertently spoiled the illusion of Santa. One respondent recognised the school caretaker playing Santa at a Christmas party when she was seven. The teacher of a seven-year-old from the USA no doubt got into trouble with parents when they asked pupils to write an essay about when they found out that Santa wasn’t real. Another teacher told their seven-year-old pupils nobody lived in the North Pole.

Other respondents learned the truth because of their growing curiosity about the world as they grew older. A clever child from the USA said at nine they had: “Learnt enough about math, physics, travel, the number of children on the planet ratio to the size of the sleigh to figure it out on my own”. A respondent from England stopped believing at eight because nobody could explain to them why Father Christmas didn’t bring food to children in “poor countries”. One nine-year-old set a trap and wrote a secret letter to Lapland which wasn’t given to their parents, nothing from that list arrived from Santa on Christmas morning.

Many children had realised Santa didn’t exist when they became aware of how goods were bought and sold, and because they realised it would be impossible for one man to deliver toys to everyone. One child had realised aged four that “It was impossible for such a fat man to fit down the chimney”. Others realised reindeer couldn’t fly, and Santa would have been hurt coming down a chimney when a fire was lit.

Some parents had been confronted by their children when they heard rumours from their friends that Father Christmas wasn’t real. One seven-year-old punched a boy at school who said Santa didn’t exist and made his nose bleed. When his mother was summoned to the school he said he attacked him because it was wrong to lie, and he ended up believing in Santa for another three years.

Some parents were forced to tell their children the truth because the idea of Santa scared them, including the mother of a five-year-old who was frightened of a strange man coming into their room.

source: euroklaret.org

These words, expressions, or numbers are from the text. What can you connect to them?

1. Age 8
2. 65 per cent
3. naughty list
4. tipsy
5. set a trap
6. caretaker

Key

1. The average age when children stopped believing in Santa.
2. A total of 65 per cent of people had played along with the Santa myth, as children, even though they knew it wasn’t true.
3. The study also showed that the threat of being on Santa’s naughty list didn’t really work for many children.
4. An 11-year-old was woken up by their “tipsy” father dropping presents while he was playing the part of Santa.
5. A nine-year-old set a trap and wrote a secret letter to Lapland which wasn’t given to their parents, nothing from that list arrived from Santa on Christmas morning.
6. One respondent recognised the school caretaker playing Santa at a Christmas party when she was seven.

Before the reign of Queen Victoria in 1837, Christmas was barely celebrated, and Christmas holidays did not exist.

But with advancements in technology, industry and infrastructure, the end of the 19th century saw Christmas turn into the biggest annual celebration, taking on the shape we recognise today.

The Idea Of Christmas

The Victorians completely transformed the idea of Christmas with family and charity at its heart. The celebration and preparation of the festival was a family occasion, and this was epitomised by Queen Victoria, her husband Albert, and their nine children.

The act of being charitable was important to middle-class Victorians. Charities provided Christmas dinners for the vulnerable in society, and newspapers printed Christmas appeals for donations.

In November 1843 Charles Dickens wrote the first of his Christmas books ‘A Christmas Carol’ highlighting social issues of poverty and neglect afflicting much of Victorian society — particularly the plight of children. This is shown in the scene where the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge the two children Ignorance and Want:

“From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment”

Servants in return for working on Christmas Day were traditionally given Boxing Day off (26 December) to visit their families. Their employers would give each servant a ‘Christmas box’, of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year, and sometimes leftover food to take home.

For many, the new railway networks made it possible for those who had originally left the countryside to seek work in the cities to return home for Christmas and spend their precious days off with loved ones.

But it would not be until the 1870s when paid holidays were established for the first time.

At the beginning of the Victorian era the exchanging of gifts had traditionally been held on New Year, but as the significance of Christmas grew this changed to Christmas Day.

 The Christmas Tree

First to introduce the Christmas tree to Britain was ‘good Queen Charlotte’ (Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz,) the German wife of George III. She set up the first known English Christmas tree at Queen’s Lodge, Windsor, in December 1800 at a party she gave for children. At first the custom of the Christmas tree didn’t spread much outside the royal family, but the future Queen Victoria recalls as a child the sight of Christmas trees in Windsor Palace:

“After dinner… we then went into the drawing-room near the dining-room… There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the trees…”

The tradition of an indoor Christmas tree first originated in Germany and following Queen Victoria’s marriage to Albert in 1841, wealthy middle-class families adopted the fashion, popularising the German tradition and making it seem British.

In 1848 the Illustrated London News published a drawing of the royal family celebrating around their decorated Christmas tree at Windsor Castle. The report was quickly picked up by other papers describing the trees in Windsor Castle in detail and showing the main tree surrounded by the royal family on its cover. In less than ten years the custom of the Christmas tree was displayed in every prosperous home in the country.

Christmas Cards

In 1843 inventor Sir Henry Cole, the first director of the V&A Museum in London commissioned his friend artist John Callcott Horsley to design a seasonal greeting card as a solution to his pile of unanswered correspondence.

The illustration showed three generations of the Cole family raising a toast to the card’s recipient: on either side were scenes of charity, with food and clothing being given to the poor.

Cole then appointed a printer to transfer the design onto cards, printing a thousand copies that could be personalised with a hand-written greeting. He kept some for himself and sold the rest charging one shilling each, initially this was expensive, but with printing technology quickly became more advanced, the price of card production dropped significantly, and together with the introduction of the halfpenny postage rate the Christmas card industry took off.

By the 1880s the sending of cards had become hugely popular, creating a lucrative industry that produced 11.5 million cards in 1880 alone.

Christmas Crackers

It was after seeing bonbons and sugared almonds wrapped in twists of paper in Paris, that British confectioner Tom Smith created the Christmas Cracker.

Smith invented a banger mechanism, that ‘cracked’ when pulled releasing a mixture of sweets. He first named them ‘Cosaques‘ after the noise made when the Cossack soldiers cracked their whips, but as rival brands diluted the market the term ‘cracker’ evolved into the name used today.

By the late Victorian period, the sweets had been replaced with a small gift and paper hats, and have remained this way as a traditional part of our modern Christmas.

Tom Smith’s company still produces the highest quality Christmas crackers and holds royal warrants from both Queen Elizabeth II and the Prince of Wales.

Christmas Dinner

Turkey, plum pudding and mince-pies were all firm Victorian favourites and for those who could afford it roasted meat such as beef and goose had been the centrepiece of the British Christmas dinner.

Turkeys had first been brought to Europe by the Spanish in the 16th century, but before the introduction of steam power they were not considered a holiday staple due to the birds having to be herded for miles to market alive – making them a luxury commodity. But with the arrival of trains, the price of turkeys dropped, and their perfect size for a middle class family gathering meant that by the beginning of the 20th century the turkey soon became the traditional dish served at Christmas.

The Christmas Plum pudding came to encapsulate Christmas, evolving from the medieval ‘pottage’. The importance of the pudding grew throughout the 19th century with every Victorian expecting a pudding as the grand ‘finale’ to their festive meal.

Christmas Carols

Seasonal songs had been sung as early as the 13th century, but in Britain carols had faded away with the Puritan rejection of Christmas. While carols were not new to the Victorians, it was a tradition that they actively revived and popularised. Contrary to the Puritans, the carols when revived were more about feasting and celebration and less about religion.

The Victorians regarded carol singing as a delightful form of musical entertainment— a pleasure well worth cultivating. With a surge in published collections, old words were put to new tunes such as the book ‘A Good Christmas Box’ published in 1847, containing many carols that are still well-known today including: ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ and ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’.

Within a decade carol-singing had become widespread, and by the 1870s pianos were an affordable commodity making it an even more popular family pastime.

Father Christmas

In the 18th century Christmas customs had waned, and Father Christmas’s profile declined. But the Victorian period saw Christmas customs enjoying a significant revival.

Christmas or Old Christmas, started to be represented as a jolly-faced bearded man often surrounded by plentiful food and drink —as the emblem of ‘good cheer.’

He started to appear regularly in illustrated magazines of the 1840s dressed in a variety of costumes and usually with a crown of holly on his head.

The now-familiar rotund belly, red robes and black boots had arrived and ‘Old Father Christmas‘ was now associated with the giving of presents. The 1820s saw his sleigh and reindeer appear, and by 1870 he was wearing the customarily bishop’s red robes.

By the late 1880s Father Christmas, had become part of the home-based, domestic holiday, and a symbol of giving.

The day of celebration had also changed, from 5 December (St Nicholas’s day); to Christmas Eve.

Although it may seem on the surface that the Victorians were concentrated only with the ‘merriment’ of Christmas, there is a strong moral thread that holds all these traditions together; that Christmas is a time to be charitable and loving—to simply be kind to one other.

“Then Bob proposed ‘A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us’ Which all his family re-echoed. ‘God bless us every one’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.”

– Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.

source: tqemagazine

Watch the video and answer the questions.

1. What’s the main course this year?

2. Were the presents wrapped or unwrapped in Victorian times?

3. What do they sometimes use to wrap presents?

4. What do they decorate the live Christmas trees with?

5. What were the latest Christmas hits in Victorian times?

Key

1. boar’s head

2. They were unwrapped.

3. plain brown paper

4. candles

5. Silent Night, Jingle Bells, Away in a Manger

Every year, millions of kids around the globe communicate with Jolly Old St. Nick the old-fashioned way: Pen (or crayon) and paper. The top three countries that generate snail mail to Santa send more than 4 million letters annually: CNN estimates that 1.7 million come from France, 1.35 million are sent from Canada, and more than a million letters are written in the U.S. (The United States Postal Service doesn’t have an exact number, but says the number of letters to Santa from American kids is easily in the millions.)

That’s a lot of correspondence. So what happens to all of it? Well, as with any other piece of mail, it depends on how the letter was addressed.

In 1912, the U.S. Postmaster General gave local postmasters the authority to allow employees and citizens to answer letters addressed to Santa. It eventually became known as Operation Santa, and today, multiple locations across the U.S. participate in the program to help deliver gifts to needy children. Those who want to play elf for the season can drop by any one of them and select a letter (or letters) to Santa to fulfill. If you don’t have a participating post office in your area, you can volunteer to start an Operation Santa in your city or donate to an existing location.

The USPS has another program called Letters to Santa, which guarantees children a response from the North Pole, but no presents. Parents mail their children’s letters to the “North Pole Postmark Postmaster,” along with Santa’s response and a self-addressed, stamped envelope. The North Pole Postmark Postmaster will return the letter to the child with a special postmark from Santa.

The U.S. isn’t alone in its Yuletide philanthropy—there are similar Santa programs around the globe. The Royal Mail makes sure kids who send letters to Mr. Claus receive a response, as does the Canada Post, which even gives the big guy the custom postal code “H0H 0H0.” Brazil has Papai Noel dos Correios, a program similar to Operation Santa. And in France, any child who writes to Le Père Noël will receive a response from a post office dedicated specifically to the cause. In fact, since 1962, receiving a response from Le Père Noël is actually guaranteed by law, bringing new meaning to that whole “naughty or nice” thing.

source: mentalfloss

Here are a few definitions. Find the word in the text.

1. an active effort to promote human welfare

2. the period of several days around and including Christmas Day

3. the ordinary postal system as opposed to e-mail

4. badly behaved; disobedient

5. to guess or calculate the cost, size, value, etc. of something

Key

1. philantrophy

2. Yuletide

3. snail mail

4. naughty

5. to estimate

So my friend has asked me to write to you… I have to confess it’s been hard to know what to say. Mainly because like most adults I feel preposterous asking anything of you because our time with you is surely done. Now we get our own presents, control our own fates, take responsibility for our own actions, and live in the world we have created… so it’s not for us to turn around and plead for your help with the environment, the migrant crisis, the NHS, education, food banks, human rights, fundamentalism and wars. Though God knows we need all the help we can get with all these man-made problems and more.

And it’s not that you aren’t compassionate and full of joy. You’re great. In spite of you being changed into different colours for corporations and being bastardised to represent materialism gone mad – despite probably originating in some season based pagan druid ritual a million thought miles from requests for spontaneously combusting hoverboards… Kidadults cynically pointing this out after having their moment of belief in you are wasting everyone’s precious time. Because you are not for them. You are for the children. Children who need some magic in a world where the borders between innocence and responsibility, playful imagination and cold, adult obstacles are continually shrinking.

This is what I’d like to ask you to help with. A little more time for children to be children. Stretch the moment of magic and playfulness. Distract them from the realities of a world gone mad so that they can laugh with their breath rather than sob with their tears. Especially those caring for family members, or suffering illness, hunger or poverty. Especially those hiding in buildings as bombs rain down, or being handed shaking with fear or cold into a boat to escape environmental disaster or war. Please help to light up their worlds with a moment of joy and hope.

When I think about it you’ve got it tough this year… And when I really think about it I’m not sure that asking you for a lightsaber and getting one (not that I ever did by the way) is equatable with controlling the space time continuum and making the good of childhood last a little longer.

But you do inspire wonder and awe amongst those that write you letters and go to sleep hoping there might be a new object in their possession come dawn. You inspire good behaviour and, at least in my memory, some desperate last minute attempts to redeem bad behaviour so as not to be overlooked. Spare a thought too for those millions who want to write to you but through illiteracy can’t. Hear their words and help to give them the time and chance to learn how to read and write so they can better their lives and escape their impoverished beginnings.

I feel a little sorry for you. And I guess I’ve done exactly what I said I wouldn’t… Asked you to help with adult problems and solve some of the greatest worries we have for our children. I promise to leave some extra port and mince pies for you!

Lots of love

Benedict x

P.S. Please could I have that lightsaber now?

source: Huffington Post

Father Christmas has different names in different countries. Can you match the names with the countries?

Key

1. c.

2. a.

3. e.

4. b.

5. d.

6. g.

7. f.