Reindeer!

Today is Saint Nick's Day, which I was reminded of by a German colleague. It is widely celebrated in many parts of Europe. For me, it is this legend/song and the day was this awful movie my brother PJ offered me one Christmas. But since I already blogged about it in French tonight, I thought I would blog about the modern Santa Claus, or rather the reindeer that carry Santa around the world. I took this picture at the Christmas fayre yesterday. They often have reindeer in such fayres. I have seen reindeer in captivity like this fairly often, and at least once... on the table. It was during a family holiday in Sweden, our hosts, the family of the foreign exchange student who had lived with ours for a year (our Swedish sister as my bros and I call her) had prepared this very unique roast. Delicious, I have to confess. Of course, I had reindeer meat, which we call caribou in Québec, on other occasions, but it was in a tourtière, so I did not distinctly remember the taste until I had this experience in Sweden. I associated the animal a lot with this country, maybe as much as I associate it with Santa Claus. And I have to say, seeing them so close yesterday made me feel guilty about eating their meat.