Happy Holidays!

I'd like to quickly note that I'm centrally mentioning Christmas in this post, but mostly from an outsider's view. I know not everyone reading celebrates this holiday, but I'm talking here about the general atmosphere of Christmas. It's for everyone. Personally, following a neutral, somewhat agnostic, pre-Christian belief system, I'm just an observer looking and commenting. When Hannukah starts getting out of control and changes its own history to market more stuff, I'll be sure to mention it.

May Krampus tear your eyes out, shove you in his bag, and take you back to his cave.

I am not a Christmas person whatsoever. I observe a light Sun ritual for Yule (December 21st-22nd), but the actual idea of Christmas is absolutely revolting to Me. Personally, I would never let My child sit in a stranger's lap. Much less if that stranger is an older, single gentleman who spends his time laughing and promising gifts to children. It seems a bit rapey to Me.

Our modern idea of Santa Claus was more or less created in the early to mid nineteenth century. Of course, there are origins that date back to Saint Nicholas or Sinterklaas as well as the English Father Christmas, but the whole... image and idea we currently hold canon dates to a couple of poems, Old Santeclause and The Night Before Christmas, published and  1821 and 1823, respectively. With additional lore and imagery through the years, by the time Coca-Cola started using his image for marketing in the 1930's, the "Santa story" was pretty much fully developed. The practice of "department store Santas" had been started some forty years earlier.

It seems interesting that Santa as a staple of children's imagination has spread to places who already had their own gift-giving folklore. Santa is a somewhat accepted image even in My own home country, Spain. However, in Spain, the gift-givers are the three kings (or the three Biblical Magi: Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar), and they arrive on January 6th. Still, a good amount of the Spanish people I know celebrate motherfuckin' Christmas, without this whole Three Wise Men thing. Honestly, getting to Jesus some 12 days after his birth... seems like a gamble. I mean, Mary and Joseph really stayed in a stable for a whole two weeks after "their" child was born? And if the kid was in a manger the whole time... well that's a whole bunch of animals that don't have a place to eat from. I digress.

It also seems that Santa is very associated with gifts these days, as opposed to Christmas. The whole "good cheer" aspect of it is pretty lost with all the gift giving. The Family Guy episode Road to the North Pole completely encapsulates how I feel about Santa. Be sure to close the advertisement on top of the actual video, it's gonna try to trick ya. You're welcome.

However, it seems I only have to go back a couple of centuries to find a bunch of disturbing accompanying characters to the original Saint Nicholas. Zwarte Piet and Krampus, two of the more popular figures of this season, are mostly prevalent in Germanic and Alpine Europe, and accompanied St. Nicholas. One's a mischievous black guy, the other one's a demon who takes bad children away (and potentially beats them). I like these two. They add a little fun and a little consequence to the holidays. Face it, no matter how bad you were, did Santa ever really bring you just coal? No. But I liked the idea that a scary demon lord from the Abyss could come take you away if you misbehaved. It seems a bit more... I don't know... with consequence.

I never really did the "Santa thing." As a child, I kinda figured it out by Myself by the time I was six or seven, and catching My parents wrapping gifts shortly after pretty much confirmed My suspicions. Nobody told Me. I was just like... "er... no. Something doesn't work here."

Don't get Me wrong, I FUCKING LOVE PRESENTS. But I like to take a little time at Christmas to appreciate the things I already have. I don't do the Thanksgiving thing much (as I mentioned in My Thanksgiving post), so I usually take Christmas as quiet personal time to reflect and be thankful. It's just more My wave. Thanksgiving's just an excuse to eat and say you're thankful, so people don't look at you weird. But what I wrote then, I honestly feel more now.

So take a moment today, if you have time, and reflect on all that you have, and the people around you whom you love. This holiday was based off a time for warmth and togetherness, during the longest night of the year. So stay close to the fire. :-)

Happy holidays to all who celebrate them. If you're not celebrating anything specifically today, I guess it's just Tuesday for you, so have a good Tuesday.