"In mutual silence proceeds observed, through an almost invented red and master of fairy tales "***Christmas is a beautiful party and we too like the Gentile Polo Art Studio to celebrate, but how does the myth of St. Nicholas - Santa Claus? For those who like the artist, Gentile Polo and I, it is curious to try to tell it!
three children had nothing to eat, Nicola gave him an apple each. In the night the fruits were transformed, becoming golden. (in "Why do you give apples to San Nicolò?", giornaledilecco.it of 06.12.2017)Hence the tradition in Lecco to give the children also a beautiful red apple and why the saint is iconographically depicted or with three bags / globes of gold, or with three juicy golden apples.
The northern European immigrants brought these legends with them when they founded the first colonies in the New World. Those Dutch, remained fond of St. Nicholas, spread his name, "Sinterklaas". (by Brian Handwerk in Da San Nicola in Santa Claus - the true story of Santa Claus, nationalgeographic.it dated 24.12.2015)Before then in America and England Christmas was seen more as a pagan festival where the climax of the party was a massive consumption of alcohol. In the early 1800s the new idea began to spread:
Already in a book dated 1809, Washington Irving imagined a Nicholas walking on rooftops with his flying chariot carrying presents to good children; then it was the turn of an anonymous book in verse, The Children's Friend, with the first true appearance of Santa Claus, associated with Christmas "but deprived of any religious characteristic, and dressed in furs typical of the funny bearers of Germanic gifts," explains Bowler . This Santa brings gifts but also inflicts punishments on bad children, and his chariot is pulled by only one reindeer. The reindeer become eight and the wagon becomes a sled in the poem A Visit From St. Nicholas, written in 1822 by Clement Clark Moore for his children but immediately became "viral". For many decades, Santa Claus is represented with various features and clothes of various shapes and colors. (by Brian Handwerk in Da San Nicola in Santa Claus - the true story of Santa Claus, nationalgeographic.it dated 24.12.2015)Between the end of the 1800s, with illustrations by the political cartoonist Thomas Nast and The Coca Cola advertisement of 1931 by the illustrator Haddon Sundblom, which brought together the memories of Saint Nicholas and the "spirit of Christmas present" by Charles Dickens (Canto di Christmas) Santa Claus acquires the current connotations, replacing the white or blue robe and the red or yellow surcoat embroidered in gold with red fur tunic and trousers, the miter with a red pom-pom cap. The advertising image returns to Europe thanks also to the
American soldiers disembarked during the Second World, and the cheerful fat ends up symbolizing the generosity of the US in the reconstruction of Western Europe. (by Brian Handwerk, ibid.)Santa Claus "back" is celebrated on December 25th.
Catherine Wilkinson, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Manchester, tried to reconstruct her true aspect based on the human remains preserved in the crypt of the Basilica of San Nicola di Bari [...] When, in the fifties of the last century, the crypt was restored, the skull and the bones of the saint were carefully measured, photographed and radiographed. Wilkinson examined these data in the light of modern techniques of forensic anthropology, using a software for facial reconstruction and adding details deduced from the features of the Mediterranean populations of the time. The result - an elderly man with an olive skin, a broken nose perhaps during persecution, and a beard and gray hair - was illustrated in the BBC documentary "The Real Face of Santa". (by Brian Handwerk in Da San Nicola in Santa Claus - the true story of Santa Claus, nationalgeographic.it dated 24.12.2015)Whatever your Christmas, whether you celebrate it on 05 or 25, or both as you like to do at the Gentile Polo Art Studio, never forget that behind the gift is the person, the "I thought of you, I love you "And it is the only value that matters. (In these terms the whole year can be Christmas!) So celebrate and ... Happy Saint Claus - Babbo Natale - Father Noel - Sinterklaas - Peer Noel - Baba Noel - Saint Nicholas ... to everyone !!! ... and no Krampus will seize you.
(Lucia Martorelli - Gentile Polo Art Studio)