What to write about today? It's been over a week since my last post, which is like a year-long sabbatical in the blogsphere. Nothing is particularly inspiring/enraging me right now, at least nothing I can make sound funny. Let's see . . . oh, wait.
It's Christmastime.
Why not take a shot at that? I mean, everyone else on the Internet is. It's practically required that you do some manner of "Holiday Special" in December, and it relieves me of the need to come up with a topic on my own. So, my take on Christmas. I'll give you two guesses how I feel about the holidays, and the correct answer rhymes with 'pisenchantment.' Can you figure it out? Yeah, I'm pretty much over Thanksmaskwanzakkahyear's and have been for a long time now. For this and other revelations, read on.
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| "Here's another shocker: I like BEER." |
The one thing everyone, no matter how cheery and Prozac-powered, is allowed to express a degree of cynicism about is something I, a professed and ordained cynic, also do not care for. And it's not because they've "taken the Christ out of Christmas." Historically speaking, Jesus has always had pretty stiff competition for the holiday, and it can be argued that, in fact, someone originally "put the Christ in Paganmas," so this is shit just coming full circle. Nor is it the opposite - I'm not hating on the Anointed One, either. The proverbial reason for the season, whatever that means to you, is sort of irrelevant to me.
Maybe it's a gut reaction to the saccharine, dewy-eyed sentiment associated with the season. Maybe it's the bittersweet memories of my long-gone childhood, which time has slowly robbed of its magic. Maybe it's because Christmas has lost the bulk of its significance for me as I shed religion, tradition, and materialism, the central tenets of the holiday. Maybe it's the rampant supersaturation of the year's closing months with "Holiday culture," like twinkling lights going up before the first snowflake falls, morons wearing sweaters with bulbs woven into them, and every business looping the same 23 songs that were tired cliches during the Nixon administration. Maybe it's the fact that otherwise normal people kick off the season by stealing, trampling, macing, and even
killing each other for material
things.
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| "Peace on Earth and goodwill toward- GIVE ME THAT FUCKING XBOX, TWAT!" |
Actually, yes, I can say with some certainty it
is in fact all of those things. I am not claiming any originality here; I am one of those Scrooge/Grinch types who just can't get into the spirit anymore. I don't necessarily hate it, I just don't really care one way or the other. Aside from the occasional peptic ulcer that develops after hearing the 76th repetition of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland," the holidays do not elicit a strong reaction from me. Sue me.
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| As opposed to Katy Perry, who gets a surprise orgasm from them. Apparently. |
But, hey, just because I'm not down with Yuletide joy and shit, doesn't mean I am disqualified from spreading a little knowledge, right? So, without further ado, here is my list of
Things You Should Already Know About Christmas.
1) We Got the Day Wrong
You ever notice how the Nativity Story never mentions the bitter cold of winter, unlike that pretty-yet-insipid Christmas carol, "In the Bleak Midwinter"? And the shepherds who receive the Annunciation (think of it as a divine memo) via angelic choirs are out in the pastures with the flocks, which is kind of weird, given that December isn't exactly prime grazing-season. There's also no allusion to any Roman holiday occurring, even though a little festival called Saturnalia would have been going on at the time under the Roman government - a festival so wildly popular amongst the citizenry that they rioted whenever an emperor attempted to curtail it. Just to give you an idea how popular Saturnalia was, the people dared the wrath of Caligula - more or less acknowledged even in his own day as Supreme Bugfuck Crazy Batshit of the Roman dynasts - to preserve the hallowed tradition. The commoners, who had every reason to expect their insane potentate would douse a city block in honey and release imported rabid badgers and call it social welfare, had the guts to tell ol' Caligula to
fuck off if he thought he was going to cut Saturnalia short
.
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| Pictured: urban renewal, Roman-style. |
And do you know what? It worked. Occupy Rome, in an era when it was legal to crucify people for fun, achieved its goal. In fact, the festival was so popular that it would probably have been hard to nix even if, say, the religion it was based on fell out of favor. Even if the official faith of the state were changed. Kind of like Emperor Theodosius decided to do in 380 AD, making the
Roman Empire a formally Christian state. Isn't it a tad strange that, given the absence of biblical evidence for a December Nativity, the celebration of Jesus's birthday started being observed in the latter half of that month, coinciding with the older festival of Saturnalia? Which was tied in with the winter solstice, an astronomical event hallowed by most of the provincial pagan tribes the newly-Christianized Roman missionaries were attempting to convert/placate/conquer? Pretty zany coincidence, huh?
But as long as we're on the subject . . .
2) We Got the Story Wrong
This probably comes as a surprise to you if you haven't brushed up on your New Testament trivia, but the Nativity (that's the birth of Jesus Christ, last of the prophets, savior of mankind, God incarnate) is only mentioned in two out of the four Gospels. That's 50% of them. Mark, usually deemed the most historically-accurate Book, makes zero mention of it. That's sort of a monumental omission on the part of a chronicler. Unlike, say, George Lucas initially skipping all the backstory of
Star Wars so he could jump ahead to "the good parts" and rock socks with the Vader revelation, the Apostles would presumably have felt the need to detail minutia like, you know, a virgin birth, a brand-new star moving across the sky, and the heavens parting to reveal a
host of freakin' angels who told a bunch of yokels that God had just beamed down.
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| "Sorry, Mark, this opening is good, really riveting stuff, but it makes the story too damn long and slow for the audience. It's gotta go." |
If you're a historian, especially one with a proselytizing agenda, you would not fail to mention in your magnum opus that the dude you are writing about, your personal friend and a man you believe to be the messiah, had this complex, intriguing, fucking magical origin story. Unless you'd never heard that. Here's the thing: most biblical scholars, including the ones who graduated seminary and are standing at your pulpit, agree the tale of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and angels, wise men (never numbered in the Bible, by the by), talking animals and drummer boys, is 99% made up. No historical basis. And yet we still center
the religious holiday of the year around it. Below is a chart I did not make, because I'm not that smart, showing to what degree the Gospels (not counting John, who was the Hunter S. Thompson of the Disciples) are actually telling the same story.
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| Not much. |
Curiously, most Bibles don't include this reference chart. Many Christians these days will argue it's the essence rather than the literal truth of the Bible that matters most, but you have to admit that's a pretty big dose of "literary license" to take.
But I've bagged on JC enough. How about his main adversary, his biggest rival, the greatest threat to the "true" meaning of Christmas?
3) Santa Claus - Dissociative Identity Disorder Sufferer
Whether you were raised in a religious or secular household (mine being mixed), you had some kind of exposure to the Santa Clause legend. To be fair, he benefits from being a *SPOILER ALERT* fictional character, as opposed to a worshiped figure. So it's acceptable for his history to be bit dodgy, drawing from different sources. But it's when you actually delve into those sources that shit gets downright weird. It's old hat at this point to say that Santa is essentially God for children, but considering that fact, it is surprising how little people know about his fabricated story, aside from general associations of elves, the North Pole, reindeer, and trespassing. The main influence on the character most Americans know is Sinterklaas, the Dutch folkloric hero. I know what you're thinking: "Isn't Van Helsing the Dutch's traditional, go-to cultural hero?"
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| "Johnny Appleseed was a bitch. I got your 'Choir of the Bells' right here." |
Well, before Hugh Jackman donned leather and tight pants in an ill-conceived homage to Bram Stoker's Gothic masterpiece, there was a guy called Sinterklaas. He gave gifts to children in December, he wore a lot of red. He also arrived in the Netherlands, dressed as a Catholic bishop, annually via steamboat from Spain. You know, just like Santa Claus. Due to a really complicated series of documented events involving the
Bishop of Myra (in Turkey), international grave-robbing, and medieval blackface, the Dutch created their wintertime holiday icon, Sinterklaas. And this was in the days of post-Christianized Europe, when people were starting to realize you needed that niggling detail of
proof to claim something was true.
Their fictitious character was allegedly based on the historic Greek Saint Nicholas, an epithet still hilariously applied to the bullshit caricature that is Santa Claus. And his
hagiography (word of the day, non-Catholic bitches!) is chock-full of Christmas cheer: he resurrected three murdered children (or possibly clerks) whose cured remains were going to be sold off as pork by a demented butcher, and secretly supplied marriage dowries for three impoverished young women destined to become prostitutes, because that was the only career opportunity at the time for poor girls. Just like in the carols, right?
Oh, and let's not forget the pagan influences. Gift-giving around the winter solstice was associated in the Germanic region of pre-Christian Europe with the Norse deity Odin, an old, one-eyed, bearded death god who liked to ride his eight-legged horse Sleipnir through the Viking villages, rewarding those children who fed his mutant equine straw or carrots, left in their boots hearth-side, with candy and novelties. Sound familiar? That's because Odin was a key inspiration behind a major Hollywood film.
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| Beverly Hills Cop 3. |
Looking at this bizarre amalgam of history, half-truths, and bad acid trips, American marketers of the 19th century said to themselves
Yeah, that's
a children's icon! Let's use that
image to sell shit! Because Easter traditions weren't confusing enough. And so was born the jolly old elf, despite never being labeled an elf before.
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| Which is how he got so many fangirls. |
So I hope you found this breakdown fun and informative, if a bit illusion-shattering, and may your Nonspecific, Religiously-Neutral Midwinter Holiday of Material Consumption be a happy one, full of warm, fuzzy feelings. Or, barring that, a consistent peppermint schnapps buzz.
KP, out.
