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From: lrudolph@panix.com (Lee Rudolph)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Santa's red and white suit originates from cola commercial?
Date: 18 Dec 1996 11:54:34 -0500

marnix@et.tudelft.nl (M. Arnold) writes:

>Marnix "Sinterklaas kapoentje, gooi wat in m'n schoentje" Arnold

Here's the whole paragraph from Legman of which an extract appears in http://tafkac.org/books/legman/legman_II_1.html -- I don't think we had any Netherlanders around when I first posted the reports. Is there anything to this? 

     Santa Claus, finally--honest, kids, I'm sorry, but I've got
     to call the strikes and balls the way I see them!--is also
     castrated.  This is plainly stated in modern Dutch folklore,
     which also supplies Santa Claus' last name.  In Holland he
     is {\it Sinter Claas Kapoentje} (Santa Claus the little
     Capon), and, like the minor representation of the Father-God
     that he is, he rewards good children with wooden shoes full
     of toys, while his sinister Negro helper, Black Peter
     (really just a poor chimney sweep: also castrated, with
     the terrible tar-caused cancer of the scrotum), brings
     switches to beat bad children with.  As to {\it who} has
     castrated Santa Claus, see the First Series, I.iii, pages
     78-79, ``The Diaper and the Scythe.'' [G. Legman, _No
     Laughing Matter_, p. 493]

Lee "now we know what the ornaments on the tree represent, I guess"


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