New Year’s Christmas in Turkey

You might be familiar with Christmas trees and Santa Clauscosplay” around Christmas in Europe or elsewhere … it seems to be increasingly popular in non-Christian cultures too … as I was recently able to witness in Istanbul.

But they seemed to get one thing wrong: they put these things up because of New Year’s Eve. m(

In shopping malls this seemed to be so “excessive” that a 4-year-old child innocently asked his mother:

“Mommy, why are there so many Nassreddin Hocas?”

– orig. along the lines of “Anne, niye her yerde Nasreddin Hoca var?”

It caught quite a laugh at the time … but there is a undeniable truth in his words.
Why do people in a country with a 97% Muslim population copy a (originally) heathen custom that has later been adopted into Christian tradition (thanks to Pope John Paul II) (in case of the Christmas tree) and a fictional character whose purpose has become to give Christmas also a secular face (in case of Santa Claus) and apply it to the wrong holiday?

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