Well, it was a music thread from the beginning, Mark (at least inside my own head ;-)), since I put it up in protest of the song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".

(and "Trading places" is one of my favorite comedies, especially in that scene in the subway, when they are all "going undercover")

And as for a specific "Green man" figure associated with the winter gift-giving or child-eating being^*, as I understand it, the specific icon of the man-with-leafy-vegetation-for-hair is the summer aspect of the wild man -- taking that form for the spring and summer rituals -- and that the Green man as such wouldn't be around at the end of December... though in this book I cited from at the beginning of this thread, there are several reproductions of the gift-giver figure with horns...


^*just thought of this: could this be the origin of the gingerbread man tradition: leaving little edible effigies of children to appease the gift-giver, so he won't eat the real ones?