OCR Text |
Show CHRISTMAS HELD TWICE YEARLY If children instead of their parents par-ents were allowed to choose the 1 family homesite, the tiny fishing village of Rodanthe, N. C., would become a metropolis overnight. I Here's a place they celebrate two Christmases every year. Santa Claus, his reindeer scampering scam-pering over the sands of North Carolina's outer banks, makes his first stop in Rodanthe during his annual world tour on the night of December 24. Hardly have the children recovered from their oversupply of candy and wild duck when Santa returns in time for , "Old Christmas," which for hundreds hun-dreds of years Rodantheans have celebrated on January 5. This time, however, Santa is accompanied accom-panied by a menacing orge, known as "Old Buck," who takes care of the bad children while Santa administers ad-ministers to the good. The historical background of "Old Christmas" is uncertain. It may be a throwback to the Gregorian Gre-gorian calendar or it may have started as a celebration of the Twelfth Night when the wise men came to Bethlehem bearing gifts for the Christ child that Li 5 1 3 somehow got off schedule a day. Elsewhere the Twelfth Night is celebrated on January 6. But those celebrations are far different from Rodanthe's "Old Christma s," which only in recent years has been supplemented by the observance observ-ance of December 25. |