How did Santa get hooked on cookies and milk?
By Kylie Mohr, NPR
You know the Christmas routine: decorate the tree, wrap gifts and leave out treats for Santa on Christmas Eve.
Marketers and Hollywood reinforce that cookie tradition for us year after year.
This year, in Reddi-Wip’s “I Am Not Your Dad” commercial, a father is caught by his son nibbling cookies. In The Santa Clause, a Tim Allen Santa tells a little girl that he can’t eat fattening treats and then returns the next year to find soymilk instead. Macaulay Culkin, as Kevin in Home Alone, leaves out milk and cookies without his parents around to prompt him.
Clint Black even wrote a Christmas song titled “Until Santa’s Gone (Milk And Cookies).”
But cowboy crooners aside, we got to wondering: How did cookies and milk come to be Santa’s refreshments of choice in the U.S., and around the world?
What a fun article to have for the Holidays! When my sons were young, in an effort to set a good example, we left Santa a banana. We thought by the time he got to our house, he would need something nutritional.
One year, to the boys’ surprise, Santa inadvertently stepped on the banana, as he was exiting the fireplace. The boys loved the letter he wrote thanking them for thinking of his health and apologizing for the smashed fruit.
What a wonderful time of year for memory making. Happiest to all.
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