Re: Fw: Christmas things

Hello, all:

This is just my uninformed guess, but I would think that "Christmas" and "Santa Claus", being basically Christian concepts that developed several thousand years after Nostratic ceased to exist as a distinct language or dialect group, wouldn't exist per se in Nostratic. They may, as modern "heathens" still do, have observed the Summer and Winter Solstices and the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes, but that is is just a WAG on my part. Depending on where the speakers of Nostratic lived, they may or may not have known about reindeer, which live in the far northern tundras of Eurasia and North America (caribou). The current-day Sami (Lapps) of northern Scandinavia and Russia, being part of the Finno-Ugric or Uralic language family and thus a "daughter" of Nostratic, herd them, but I don't know if that can be considered an indication that any ancestral speakers of Nostratic would have lived in that region or otherwise had knowledge of reindeer.

Just my $.02 worth:

Andy Howey

-----Original Message-----
From: Gerry [mailto:waluk@...]
Sent: Friday, December 27, 2002 10:11
To: jeffco
Cc: Nostratica@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Nostratica] Fw: Christmas things

Hi Jean,

I'll post your question to the group and maybe someone knows the answer.

To all Nostratica folks,

Can anyone help out? The question is: What, I wonder, would "Happy Christmas", "Santa Claus" and "reindeer" be in Nostratic?

Thanks,

Gerry

----- Original Message -----

From: jeffco

To: waluk@...

Sent: Friday, December 27, 2002 7:59 AM

Subject: Re: [Nostratica] Fw: Christmas things

Hi Gerry -

Thanks for the card - which, for some inexplicable reason, I found absolutely mesmerising!

(What, I wonder, would "Happy Christmas", "Santa Claus" and "reindeer" be in Nostratic?)

Hope you enjoy the holiday too,

Best regards,

Jean Kelly

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