The Urban Myth of Santa Claus

Long ago, I wrote a comedic essay on the parallels between Santa Claus and Satan.  I was surprised to find quite a few things in common, though I was really only joking.  I finished the piece "...and the North Pole is as cold as hell!"

Back then, I didn't even know that "Nick" or "Old Nick" is also another word for The Devil in some parts of the world.  It is also the root of the name for several types of fairies in different regions (neck, nykk, nissie, nixsie, nyx, etc.  This itself may have come from the Roman "nymph".)  When we accept that many of our Christmas traditions have pagan roots, it's easy to see where all the confusion might have come from.

I've studied a lot of world mythologies this year.  And in doing so, I have taken a step back from my own culture's mythologies and seen it anew.  To us, we are a rational culture which has abandoned actual belief in strange tales of gnomes with funny names who spin straw into gold and gods with hammers who strike lightning out of the sky.  What silly nonsense!  Yet we have a large number of our own myths, that when viewed from outside, are just as silly.  When it comes to Christmas, those myths are borrowed from the same kinds of people who believed in giants and gods who live on Mt. Olympus.  And we find we are no different.

Think about it.  We cut down a tree and put it in the living room and place a star on top.  We hang socks from the fireplace.  Then we place cookies and milk out all night for a fat man in a red suit, who will come down the chimney at midnight and fill the socks with treats, then pull brightly colored packages (made by elves) out of his sack and place them under the tree.  But only for children he has judged worthy.  Then he will climb back up the chimney, hop on a flying snow-craft pulled by a team of reindeer, and fly back to his home in the North Pole.

If you hadn't grown up with that story, you would laugh, and say, "People really believed that crap?"  And yet parents tell the tale to their children as if it were fact, take their children to the "marketplace" to sit on his lap, then stay up on Christmas night to enact the ritual.  We put statues and images of Santa and all his followers all over our houses and marketplaces and sing songs about him.  Revealing the secret to children is taboo.

Have we really changed all that much?  In the future, when antiquities scholars will tell of our God and our Demigods, Santa will be highest on that list, akin to Thor in his second-place status next to Odin.  He will be the god associated with giving, kindness, children, winter, snow, the cardinal direction of "north", and the color "red".  The Easter Bunny and cupid and leprechauns and ghosts will be right up there, too, and academics will debate whether we held them as gods or animistic spirits.  For all our science, we haven't really left our myths behind.

Everything about the Santa myth is a fairytale.  With actual fairies.  It's so ingrained in our culture that we often miss it.  But all the elements are there:

• Magic.
• Elves.
• Flying.
• Leaving out food to appease him.
• Inexplicable gift giving (remember the shoemakers elves?)
• Time dilation to get around the world in one night.

Fairies themselves were a pagan belief, existing long before Christianity.  In an effort to get people to stop worshiping false gods, the Catholic church literally demonized the fae folk, turning them into devils, the very minions of Satan.  Hence, when studying fairytales, I've often seen "devil" being synonymous with "elf".  The original horned gods (often with the cloven hoofs of goats) were Pan, Puck, and the satyr.  But the devil himself, once the imageless antithesis of God, was given a makeover to resemble these formerly-benign gods, to remind people where their loyalties should lie.

Given the great distances back then, words evolved over time.  The nixies became nykks which became "Nick" (the devil), which became "to nick something" (meaning to steal).  Saint Nicholas' name is most likely a coincidence, but he was actually from Turkey waaaay back in 270CE.  He didn't wear a fur lined coat at all, but he did give things away, year round.  Most notably, he saved women from prostitution by giving them dowries and prevented children from being butchered by cannibals by raising them from the dead.  Not a very familiar image when thinking of Father Christmas...

But we are pretty sure that the Germanic peoples associated Saint Nick with the god Odin for some reason.  In Odin we see a more familiar figure: one who was celebrated at the pagan winter holiday of Yule with the practice of leaving carrots outside in boots for his flying horse to eat.  In exchange he left treats for the children.

It is easy to imagine the Church trying to re-label the pagan nykks as devils, and their god Odin as the devil, and them hearing the name Saint Nicholas, and then deciding it was ok to celebrate him during Yule, and since he was a "Nick", and so was Odin, and they both gave things away, then it was all one and the same.

Maybe.  That last bit was just a wild guess, but in seeing how Roman nymphs evolved into European fairies in the first place, it's easy to imagine how these things can happen.

We can read recently-written stories about vampires and werewolves who wander among us, but few, if any of those will achieve the status of myth: beliefs about how the world is, or how we'd like it to be, that are passed along from parent to child, slowly evolving through the ages, until no one can quite remember just exactly where it came from.  When we think of urban fantasy, we can't forget that the old stories are just as alive today as they always were; the living, breathing spirit in the body of our culture.

A Toast to The Copious Cornucopia of Ancient and Modern Folktales

Before giving thanks this year, think on this: Words are an endlessly renewable resource.

Imagine: If an infinite number of turkeys pecked at an infinite number of computers for an infinite length of time, they would eventually type all our favorite novels, exactly word for word.  An even more exciting prospect is that they would type a great number of new novels that the world has never before seen.  The nightmare of sorting through all the random rubbish to find such gems would take an infinite number of pilgrims, and being Puritans, they may simply throw out all the best stuff for containing gratuitous witchcraft and hot inter-species sex scenes.

Obviously there is a better way.  Instead of implementing this absurd system of random word generation with a Thanksgiving-motif, society employs the humble writer, who types non-random words wracking their brains to find a combination that pleases everyone.  Everyone except the Puritans.

Word combinations are free and infinite.  Other harvests require real-world resources, such as lumber, steel, plastics, fuel, factories, fertile ground and seeds.  The harvest of Thanksgiving requires agricultural infrastructure and assembly lines to fill the cornucopia with plentiful food.  But to fill the mind with ideas and images, this takes only time.  Time, an imagination, a bit of electricity, and fast-moving fingers.  The cornucopia of fiction overflows, and will always overflow, until the sun itself stops shining, the oceans dry up, and the last human is no more.

It is a human trait, to pass on these stories, since ancient times.  One of these stories, imagined by myth-makers long ago, told of the god Zeus who grew up in a cave.  Some of our favorite urban fantasy protagonists were raised by wolves, but this one was raised by a goat.  Now there's an old twist on a new trope!  The goat's name was Amalthea.  One day, while tussling playfully with Amalthea, Zeus underestimated his strength, and broke off one of her horns.  Regretting this accident greatly, he made amends by blessing the horn with the power to grant all wishes.  Any material riches a person could want would be granted to anyone who possessed this horn of plenty.

I'm not sure how this helped Amalthea, since everyone would covet such a treasure and try to steal her horn away, but old myths often have a lot of plot holes.  Regardless, a lot of people really liked this story, and it lives on to this day.  It is where we get the cornucopia symbol, overflowing with the bounty of harvest, every Thanksgiving.  This is also where the unicorn myths originated, so it would not be too outrageous to create a new holiday mascot: The Thanksgiving Unicorn.

So here's to a wonderful holiday to you all.  May your cup overflow with books, words, beautiful ideas, far away places or strange creatures in familiar places nearby.  May your plot be twisted, your mind expanded, and may your protagonist always win in the end.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Argentina Gnome - Creepy Reality? Or Just a Hoax?

Ghosts get all the press.  Every paranormal show on Discovery Channel is poltergeist this, and haunted that.

We like to read about vampires, werewolves, and witches.  Some of us even like to pretend that they're real.  So when evidence of non-ghostly supernatural folklore appears in the media, it catches my attention.

In 2008, the small town of Guemes, Argentina gained notoriety when The Sun (UK) reported that a gnome had been captured on film. According to The Sun, locals had been plagued by this little gnome for some time.  The boys who captured this video were minding their own business when they heard a sound, as if someone where throwing rocks.  When Jose Alvarez, who had been playing around with his phone camera, saw a movement in the grass, he pointed it towards the sound.  And that's when he captured the gnome:



Now The Sun is not always known for its reliable reporting.  It's sort of a mix between an American celebrity tabloid and a real newspaper, focusing on real news and politics, alongside gossip.  It is also the 10th highest circulated paper in the world.  This makes it, as a source, somewhat questionable... but also potentially reliable. So I did a little more digging.

You might be wondering why they believe in gnomes, traditionally a Norse myth, halfway across the world in Argentina.  Well they don't believe in gnomes exactly -- that's The Sun's choice of translation.  Their word for fairy or goblin is "duende", which combines Mayan, Portuguese,
and Spanish fairy mythologies.  And some believe they wear "large hats", tho not necessarily pointy ones.

There are several other films, and you can find even more if you search for duende instead of gnome.





Then I found an oddity. A version of the famous film, listed by a number of Spanish-speaking YouTube users, but this one has subtle differences that indicate The Sun version is edited:



This version contains different lighting, a flashlight beam that bounces off the gnome from time to time.  And the strange gait of the gnome in this version is somehow less convincing.  It looks like The Sun did some kind of editing, which makes this video less believable.  Or at least less creepy.

And finally, the most interesting footage of all, was of a much smaller gnome. Watch this, and then watch it again and notice the small dark spot that looks like a crack in the wall. If you imagine a gnome-shaped piece of paper being pulled by a string, you can easily see how this video is most likely a hoax:



To me, this video indicates that at least one group of kids thought a hoax would would be fun to try to pull off.  Which casts doubt on all the other videos.

Nevertheless, if this blog post on Sciencebuzz.org has any credibility, belief in duendes is strong in the region, with many people claiming to have seen them, much like Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest and ghosts throughout the US.  For that reason, we can expect to see more footage of South American gnomes, be they real or hoaxed.

And speaking of gnomes living in modern cities, I've written a short story called "The Metro Gnome", which will appear in this month's Indie Urban Fantasy Newsletter. Be sure to sign up!