more navedad para extranjeros

I had the most hilarious conversation last night with some friends. My buddy Alex lives with a German girl, and they both came over last night for drinks. After laughing hysterically on the internet at Spanish people modeling for some pageant, we started talking about the holiday to come. Since we have Monday and Tuesday off many of us are deciding to take weekend trips. After a brief chat about half-baked plans, we realized that we did not understand the reason for the holiday we are being granted. It's got something to do with the wise men setting out to go find baby Jesus or something, but really we don't know.

Chris began to bombard Tamara with questions about her "Santa Claus" and what he did, how they got their presents, etc. Hilarity ensued, or at least it did for me and Chris. For Germans, Santa is "Kris Kringle", and he has wings, flies into your house (no specific entry) and leaves you presents. If you are bad, you don't get presents. There is also some other guy that comes pretty soon and gives presents. He's called the "veiness mahn" or something like that. None of it seemed to make sense. Then I learned that the dutch or something have Santa, but that 6 to 8 black men drive his sleigh... No one knows apparently whether it is 6, or 8, or really how many, and I believe that no one at all thinks that they might be depicted as slaves either... Apparently if you are a bad kid, the black men beat you up.

what. the. hell.