GETTING KLOSE

WHY ARE SOME BABIES AFRAID OF SANTA CLAUSE? - BECAUSE THEY HAVE CLAUSTROPHOBIA

What’s so funny about this? Imagine if a young child were locked in a closet with some guy in a Santa Claus outfit who didn’t like kids. The poor child would no doubt develop DOUBLE Claustrophobia. One for an abnormal fear of enclosed spaces and the other an abnormal fear of Santa Claus or any guy named Claus. Interestingly in English, “Claus”, when preceded by the word “Santa”, is pronounced as if it had an E at the end, as in the grammatical term “clause”. By itself Claus is a common German first name, as in Claus von Stauffenberg, the German officer who tried to assassinate Hitler. Santa, of course means “saint”. So Santa Claus is really the name of a saint, who’s really Saint Nicholas (Claus is short for Nicolas). That’s why Santa is also called St. Nick., who was Greek, by the way, and not German at all. Another saint in the mix is Michael, called Szent Mikulas in some countries, or St Michael. And jus