The first time I went to a playground in Berlin, I was surprised. All the German parents were huddled together, drinking coffee, not paying attention to their children who were hanging off a wooden dragon 20 feet above a sand pit. Contrary to stereotypes(模式化观念)，most German parents I’ve met are the opposite of strict.【小题1】. Those parents at the park weren’t ignoring their children; they were trusting them. Here are a few surprising things Berlin ’s parents do:

Don't push reading. Berlin ’s kindergartens don’t emphasize academics. In fact, teachers and other parents discouraged me from teaching my children to read.【小题2】. But even in first grade, academics aren’t pushed very hard. Our grade school provides a half-day of instruction interrupted by two outdoor breaks.

【小题3】   A note came home from school along with my excited second grader. They were doing a project on fire. Would I let her light candles and perform experiments with. matches? Together we lit candles and burned things, safely. It was brilliant.

Let children go almost everywhere alone. Most grade school kids walk without their parents to school and around their neighborhoods. Some even take the subway alone.【小题4】of course, but they usually focus on traffic.，not abductions(绑架).

Take the kids outside every day. According to a German saying, “There is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.”The value of outside time is promoted in the schools.【小题5】No matter how cold and grey it gets, and in Berlin it gets pretty cold, parents still bundle their kids up and take them to the park, or send them out on their own.

Icelanders have a beautiful tradition of giving books to each other on Christmas Eve and then spending the night reading. This custom is so deeply rooted in the culture that it is the reason for the Jolabokaflod, or “Christmas Book Flood”, when the majority of books in Iceland are sold between September and December in preparation for Christmas giving.

At this time of year, most families receive a yearly free book catalog of new publications called the Bokatidindi. Icelanders read the new catalog carefully and choose which books they want to buy, fueling what Kristjan B. Jonasson, president of the Iceland Publishers Association, describes as “the backbone of the publishing industry”.

The small Nordic island，with a population of only 329,000 people, is extraordinarily literary. They love to read and write. According to Rosie Goldsmith of the BBC, “The country has more writers, more books published and more books read, than most countries in the world.”

In North America, e-books have grown in popularity—it’s not the same in Iceland. One bookstore manager told NPR, “In Iceland, you give paper books instead of e-books as gifts.” The book industry is driven by the majority of people buying several books each year, rather than the North American pattern of a few people buying a lot of books.

When I asked an Icelandic friend what she thought of this tradition，she was surprised. “I hadn’t thought of this as a special Icelandic tradition. It’s true that a book is always considered as a nice gift. We’re very proud of our authors,” said she.

It sounds like a wonderful tradition, perfect for a winter evening. I’ll include it into my own family’s celebration of Christmas. I doubt my loyalty (忠诚) to paper books will ever fade; they are what I can’t resist collecting, in order to read and re-read them, to beautify and personalize my home, to pass them on to friends and family as needed. Combining my love for books with quiet and relaxing Christmas Eves sounds like a perfect match.

For more than a century, it was a simple way of making a child’s dreams come true during Christmas. Volunteers could go to the post office, sift through piles of letters that children had sent to Santa Claus and pick one—or more—that tugged (拉、拽) at their heartstrings. Gifts were then acquired, wrapped and shipped to families whose space beneath the tree might otherwise be bare.

With the coronavirus pandemic still raging, however, the US Postal Service announced Monday that it was taking its annual “Operation Santa” campaign nationwide, and that letters to Santa could be read merely online by people across the country.

Some things aren’t changing: Much as it had over the past 108 years, the Postal Service said that it was inviting American children to write letters and to mail them to the North Pole, using a special address and ZIP code and affixing the proper postage.

This year, however, the letters will be uploaded to the Operation Santa website, so long as they are legible and make specific requests for items like toys, clothes or games. Starting December 4, postal customers can then read them and choose to send gifts with their responses, with a signature saying it’s from Santa.

“Covid-19 has caused undue hardships, both financial and emotional, to so many Americans this year,” Kimberly Frum, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service, said in an email. “The program provides kids and families with an opportunity to receive gifts during the holidays from anonymous, generous postal customers.”

Those customers used to review the letters in person, but Operation Santa has moved largely online in recent years after a pilot program in 2017. By 2019, the online operation had expanded to 15 cities, including New York, Chicago, Denver and Grand Rapids, Michigan, to, “enhance the ability for generous people across the nation to help those in need no matter where they live,” Frum said.

So-called legacy programs still operated in New York and Chicago, where customers could go to a post office to read letters in person, but those programs will not be offered this year because of the pandemic, Frum said.

The Postal Service said the Operation Santa program had received hundreds of thousands of letters each   year. “It seems like a small thing,” Frum said. “But for anyone who is struggling, it’s a huge deal to be able to give or receive a gift and share in a bit of the joy that is the holiday season.”