When you study religion, you make intriguing friends. I had two rather odd experiences on the same day. When I went to visit a longtime friend who is an observant Muslim, I found a six-foot plastic pine tree with a few odd ornaments and a torn-apart Santa Claus hat standing outside her family's door. My friend opened the door with a concerned smile and said, “Wait until your son becomes a teenager, then you will know what I am going through.” I replied, “Good to see you, too.” 

My friend has two teenage daughters. Her husband had given into the girls and brought home a tree as a surprise and to “welcome the new year,” but it was not acceptable to my friend. She said, “It is forbidden to join in the celebrations of the other religions.” Her daughters came in with teary eyes and fought her.

“We are not celebrating Christmas,” said Zeynep. “We are just ending the year with a few decorations, what is so bad about that?” To make a long story short, we could not convince my friend to accept the poor tree back into the house.

For a 99% Muslim country that does not celebrate Christmas, it's surprising how much talk of Christmas takes place each December in Turkey. Two years ago on Dec. 28, the mufti of Kesan (a district of Edirne, a city in Thrace, neighboring Greece) made headlines by his infamous statement of “Had Santa Claus been a decent man, he would not enter into the houses from the chimney, but would have used the door.” If you Google “Noel Baba, Demre” you will immediately see the images of a huge Santa Claus monument. Demre is a district of the southern town of Antalya, and Noel Baba means "Santa Claus" in Turkish. St. Nicholas Church still stands in the town.