Christmas Quiz— The Answers

Answers to yesterday’s quiz:

1. Hannukah. Jesus was Jewish.
2. None. I think you know why.
3. None. There can be snow in a Bethlehem winter, but no reindeer.
4. No one. Ain’t no mistletoe where he lived. And they didn’t have office parties back then anyway.
5. No one. Hallmark hadn't been incorporated yet.
6. Huh?
7. None. St. Francis added them into the story over a thousand years later.
8. They didn’t. But they did have pine trees.
9. Get up and go to work. The first recorded reference to Christmas (Christ’s Mass) was in 1038. Easter was the main holiday until the Virgin Mary and Santa Claus came into the picture. (Huh?)
10. Irving Berlin. And he lived in L.A. where it never snowed. 

If you can think of a weirder, wackier holiday pieced together with so many diverse traditions, I’d like to know about it. So as I go hang out with Frosty the Snowman in a San Francisco Winter Wonderland and Deck the Halls with ivy while looking out for Rudolf’s Red Nose flying over a Partridge in a Pear-Tree, this Jewish Unitarian Buddhist practicing pagan rites says, "I Wish You a Merry Christmas."