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Hi, everyone and welcome to our Christmas Special. 欢迎来到酒馆的【圣诞特辑】.
Now you probably notice that usually with these seasonal specials, I would be the only one doing the recording. But today, we're going to connect with 安澜. And as some of you probably already know, 安澜went back for the holiday, finally.
So hi, 安澜.
Hi, Lulu, hi, everyone.
So finally back with your family.
Yes, after 3 years, I'm finally back in the UK with my family.
And tell us how do you feel? Sure excited.
Very excited. To be honest it's a bit strange being back in the UK after such a long period of time, and obviously there's lots of changes in those 3 years which don't need to mention.
But I'm really really excited, spending my time with my family and my friends and also getting ready for Christmas.
You must really feel like the festive mood in London, right? Because I mean in China it’s not really a thing.
Yeah, absolutely, all the decorations are up, all the shops now are quite busy with people doing their last minute Christmas shopping. It's really festive.
We've done Christmas episodes before, so I’m quite curious as in what do you want to talk about today?
Today I thought what we could do, we could talk about one of the main figures for Christmas and that is, of course, Father Christmas.
Father Christmas? You mean Santa Claus?
No, Santa Claus is in America. Father Christmas is what we traditionally call.
所以你们的圣诞老人叫 Father Christmas. That's pretty cute. And either way, it's the same person.
Pretty much. They come from different routes, but generally the idea of a Father Christmas or a seasonal gift giver comes from Saint Nicholas.
Yes, I've heard of Saint Nicholas, so sometimes people would nickname him, Saint Nick.
Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of children.
Patron saint其实就是有点像守护神的这种感觉. 孩子的守护神, that's why he brings the gifts.
Yep. The original story is that Saint Nicholas was a bishop in modern day Turkey, and he would secretly deliver bags of gold so that poor girls could have a dowry and get married.
Dowry 是嫁妆, so the gifts weren't gifts. They were just literally bags of gold.
They were just bags of gold, and back then there were no chimneys so he used to through the window.
I would like to be waiting for Christmas by the window and just have some strange man chuck bags of gold at me.
I know it's a bit strange. And to be honest, the original story a lot of people have forgotten. There is one tradition that we still observe. People really generally forget where it comes from. At Christmas time it can be traditional to give gold chocolate coins to children.
那种巧克力金币. That was from the tradition when Saint Nicholas used to actually give bags of gold. Yeah. I see.
And Saint Nicholas, how did saint Nicholas become Santa Claus?
Basically it was through the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, they celebrate Saint Nicholas's day, which is in early December, but they call him Santa Claus.
And obviously if you know history, a lot of American tradition was actually affected…was originally from the Netherlands.
You think that New York was originally called New Amsterdam.
True.
对, 美国它有很多风俗是最开始是从荷兰这边过去的, so now they call it Santa Claus.
Yes. But getting back to Father Christmas, there's always been a figure associated with Christmas all the way back to the 17th century when actually he was banned.
For what? I thought Father Christmas was harmless and it's not even religious. He just brought gifts and toys.
That's precisely why it was banned. In the 17th century we had the puritans and they actually banned Christmas because they said it was nothing to do with religion. It was just a pagan holiday. It was just an excuse for people to have fun.