After telling you about this in the post below, it would be criminal of me not to post this. I looked on You-Tube, and this was the best one. It lacks some of the narration of the original, but it is great fun! Papa Herman… play this for your Andrew!
Hmm… it looks as though Dede is giving a helping hand to Santa! Last year, in Yakutia, there was a “meeting” between Santa, Dede, and the local Yakut folklore figure. Probably, they were dividing up responsibilities and duties!
In a related vein, it makes me think of a traditional Christmas item on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) called “Six White Boomers”. You see, Santa uses kangaroos (“Boomers” in Aussie slang) to pull his sleigh on his Australian run. A little joey (baby kangaroo) becomes lost from his mother. Santa finds him, and he resolves to take him home to Australia. So, he calls his “boomers” to pull his sleigh. They all have jocular Aussie names (the one I remember offhand is “Desert Head”), and you hear the presenter repeating “boom… boom… boom… on his Australian run”. This is a fun little piece from the 50s, and it deserves to be better known. Not everything is serious… thank God!
Apostle St Andrew the First-Called Plants the Cross on a Hill in Kiev (Nikolai Lomtev, 1848)
This is the Sunday closest to the feastday of St Andrew on 30 November/13 December on the Orthodox Calendar. An old pious tradition says that St Andrew planted the cross on a hill near the site of Kiev, “the Mother of all Russian cities”. St Andrew is the patron saint of the Russian navy, and the sky-blue cross of St Andrew on a white field is the Russian naval ensign.
