On the 13th of november, the steamboat of "Sinterklaas" arrives in Alkmaar. People in the Netherlands and particularly the kids of the Netherlands welcome the "Sint" from his summer residence of Madrid Spain. With his boat loaded with presents for the kids who have been good, the kids await the nameday of the Sint and on "pakjesavond" the evening of the 5th of december the Sint will, on his white horse and his black helpers who are all called "Piet", bring the presents to the waiting kids..

Sinterklaas who is actually from Mira Turkey and lies burried in Bari Italy, is the predessesor of the Santaclaus who everybody knows comes Finland and brings the presents on Christmas on his sledge with reindeer .....

This year, we have started a nice Christmas project. The Italian wiktionary who will be centre stage for this, http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21 is a page where you find "Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!" in many languages and some have pronounciations. There is already a sizable collection but, it is not complete, it is not always correct and as importantly, we want to HEAR how it sounds in all these languages !!

The best place to store all these .ogg soundfiles is in our Commons project. For the use of pronounciations, the wiktionary project has come up with a naming convention: first the ISO 639 code and then the word or phrase e.g. "image:it-Buon Natale e felice Anno Nuovo!.ogg" is the one for Italian.

One way in which wiktionaries can join in is by also hosting all these merry wishes in their wiktionary with sounds and everything. Another way is by including other seasonal wishes as well. The wikipedia's can join in by having article on "Celebrating Christmas" and inform us how Christmas is celebrated in various communities, the rituals and traditions, the festivities. In Wikibooks we could do something with Christmas stories or songs from all over the world. One way in which we all can join this project is by enjoying it and have a great happy Christmas and a wonderfull new year.

Thanks, Sabine Cretella Gerard Meijssen