LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Tomte: Christmas Eve
built 157 days ago
This very ambitious and richly animated feature with the old man, Pettson and his incurably curious cat, Findus reveals the true spirit of Christmas just as Findus is losing faith in the Tomte. The Tomte is roughly the Scandinavian equivalent of Santa Claus but can ... more generally refer to a gnome or elf of sorts. Why does he never come to visit Findus on Christmas Eve like he does other children? Pettson promises his little cat that this year he will, and resolves to secretly build a mechanical Tomte, but soon begins to despair that such an undertaking is beyond even his powers of invention. But then strange and miraculous things begin to happen helping Pettson overcome the technical obstacles in ways that even he cannot explain, and teaching him that there’s more to the magic of Christmas than he may have thought.
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After the Christmas Eve meal, the family is visited by Tomte, the Swedish Santa Claus. Tomte is thought to be a little gnome with a red cap and white beard who who lives in the family barn or under the floorboards of the family's home. Tomte keeps watch over the family, and, on Christmas Eve, he leaves presents for the children. In many families, someone dresses up as Tomte and disperses the gifts. The children show their gratitude by leaving a bowl rice pudding for the little gnome.
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The Swedish word for both house gnome and Christmas Santa Claus is “Tomte”. At the beginning of the last century, the beloved Swedish artist Jenny Nyström started painting the Christmas “Tomte”, the Father Christmas who knocks on the door and brings a sack full of presents to all good children on Christmas Eve, as a small gnome. Ever since, the Swedish Santa has looked like a house gnome.
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For centuries, it was tradition to set out a bowl of porridge for Tomte, the Christmas gnome, on Christmas Eve. Tomte would decide the family’s fortunes for the coming year. In the 1880s, Swedish artist Jenny Nystrom drew jultomten as a white-bearded gnome in a red cone cap.
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Christmas Eve