You might be familiar with Christmas trees and Santa Claus “cosplay” 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?
