Santa Claus

Last Monday the Anniversary of St. Nicholas, otherwise called St. A Claus, was celebrated at Protestant-Hall.

The noted St. Nicholas, vulgarly called Santaclaus—of all the saints in the kalendar the most venerated by true hollanders, and their unsophisticated descendants.

Here, too, the winter festivals are just commencing; and the toy-shops are full of dolls and gew-gaws for the Bifana, who acts here the same comedy for children that Santiclaus does in America.

This is one of the developments Karl Marx failed to predict. Had he foreseen it he might have expired in guffaws, rolling in the aisle of the British Museum Library amid the notes for Das Kapital, that bearded Santa Claus of the revolution who slipped the unwanted gift of communism down the world's chimneys.