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Welcome to Read This and Feel Smart. Here is where I, Veriduin, produce rants about holidays, culture, grammar, and any other topics that the common person probably doesn’t know. All posts not pertaining to a specific day will be made on Fridays. Any post pertaining to a specific day will make an appearance the day before. Intelligent and/or intelligible questions will be answered on Wednesday. So, without further ado.

Read This and Feel Smart.

18/12/09

(Holy bananas, guys! We actually have people reading this besides me, Leon and Dreik! By request of our new reader, FiendishFox, we’ll be continuing our Christmas kick. Since I feel bad about not having a Hanukkah post, though, I’ll be doing one extra this week. Keep your eyes peeled, cause you never know when I’m going to post it…)

The origins of Christmas start with our nativity story. Most of you know it, but for those of you who don’t (and don’t you love that I don’t assume you know everything I know?) here’s how it goes:

Juan spawn time (inside joke), there was a man and a woman. They were engaged to be married, so we can assume they were in looooooove. Since the Bible has been translated and re-translated so many times, I’m completely unclear on WHY these two lovebirds were out and about. Some say that they were heading to the capitol to register their marriage, others say that there was a big population census and everyone was required to go to the capitol. Well, in any case, they were on the road when an ‘Angle of the Lord’ (or was it Angel?) came down to Mary, the woman, and told her she was pregnant with God’s son. Now, if you are like my mom, you might ask if this Angle impregnated her with his ‘cumming’. And I will tell you like I told her.
I’m a narrator, not a seer, damnit! (Even though she doesn’t get my Star Trek jokes…)
ANY way. So Mary and her fiancé, Joe, end up walking over to the town of Bethlehem in about nine months. Now, Bethlehem, I’ve been led to believe, was a small town. It had one inn, and it wasn’t even a Days Inn. In fact, it was a Motel 8. (Little traveling joke. But seriously, American Motel 8’s SUCK!) The stable (read parking for horses) was the only place Mary and Joe could stay for the night, at a discounted price, of course. So, of course, there in the middle of a desert, stuck in a freaking stable because Mary just HAD to stop and pee AGAIN (pregnant woman joke. Just don’t repeat it in front of a pregnant woman…) and all the rooms were taken before they got there, in the middle of the winter, Mary went into labor.
No one ever says if the midwife arrived on time, or if she just let the nurses take care of it. (Healthcare joke. Sometimes the doctors just don’t make it to the room before the baby does. Mine didn’t.) The next part of the story you see, the kid has been named Jesus Christ, because Mary didn’t stop swearing when the nurse asked her what name to put on the birth certificate. (Another joke. In the real story, there ARE no nurses, no birth certificate, and Jesus Christ was NOT used as a swear until centuries later.) Jesus was wrapped in ‘swaddling clothes’, which is a fancy way of saying Mary wrapped him up in a piece of cloth until he couldn’t move, and some local shepherds had gotten sick of listening to the Angle Boy Band and decided to follow the shine-y-ist star in the night sky.
Twelve days later, the infamous wise guys, The Three Wise Men, showed up. I can’t say how wise they really were, since they showed up nearly two weeks late and two of them gave myrrh and frankincense to a baby. Both are a kind of smelly incense-like thing that a baby would find interesting to teeth on, and most likely poison themselves. At least the third one had the sense god gave a squirel and gave Jesus money. The End.

Now comes the fun part. Picking apart the legend to find the truth. Now, waaaaaay back in the beginning, I already addressed the whole ‘why were they traveling in the first place’. Answer, No clue. Either was likely.
Next question, was Mary really pregnant with God’s son? Again, I don’t know. Since intimate knowledge of the whole sperm-and-egg concept wasn’t widely known at the time (and, before you ask, they did understand that fornication was necessary for pregnancy to occur), and the myth that if a man doesn’t ejaculate in the woman she won’t get pregnant was considered common knowledge. Truth is, sperm are designed to swim, NO(!) they don’t die instantly in open air environments, and other virgins have gotten pregnant from their (usually) boyfriends ejaculating on or near the labia. It’s not so far-fetched to think that Mary and Joe were fooling around before the wedding, people were just more discreet about such things back then.
Third, were the shepherds really there? Yet again, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. All accounts say yes, but that could be because The Vatican has absolute control over what is published in the Bible, which is our only good source info.
What animals were there? I don’t know. Honest to God, though, I was listening to a debate on what animals were documented as being in the stable.
Did Mary and Joseph really sleep in the stable? Again, this question was spawned by listening to an academic debate. By the end of it, I wasn’t even sure if I was born in a hospital, though, so I can honestly say I Don’t Know!
Did the real birth of Jesus look like the one Mom and Dad put out on the lawn? Truthfully? No. First of all, Joseph and Mary would have looked less like Anglo-Saxons and more like Middle Easterners. NO, there wasn’t any SNOW! I don’t know WHY we get all hung up about snow on Christmas, but this story took place in the DESERT! This means that if there was snow, it would have melted before it hit the ground. And the debate on which animals were there, or if they all were there, or if it was just a kangaroo…
Was the date of Christ’s birth changed to fit with the old religions of conquered countries? Again, not too sure. It IS highly likely, when you consider that the Romans first put this in to action quite effectively, the fact that by the time Christ’s birth became a popular celebration, no one knew when he was born, and the weird traditions that happen on Christmas. Yule log burning, for one, is a variant of a pagan ritual. I’ll be blowed if I can remember which one, though.

24/12/09

Santa Claus

Who is the merry Father Christmas we all know and love? My search has turned up a number of traditions and origins for the fluffy guy in red. To find out the answer to our question, we have to go back before 300 AD. Back then, his name was just Nicholas, and later, he became the Patron Saint of Giving. Supposedly, the real Saint Nicholas died about 350 AD. He became a widely popular figure in the middle ages, and there are thousands of churches dedicated to him. The celebration of St. Nicholas actually took place on December sixth, and according to my research, many countries still give gifts on this day, rather than Christmas.
Originally, Santa Claus was dressed in either red or blue, a throwback to the Russian Grandfather Frost. Grandfather Frost, usually accompanied by his granddaughter Sneturochka (Snow Girl), throws a new years party for the good boys and girls, gifts included. My research indicates that Grandfather Snow, although now is closely associated with New Years, prior to 1917 he was more involved with Christmas.
Finland has their own version of Saint Nick, though his origins are very different. Joulupukki (Yule Buck) first came on the scene as a pagan tradition. Pagan evil spirits of darkness wore goat skins and horns, and during this festavel these creatures demanded presents rather than give them. No one has been clear on how this horrifying creature transformed into the kind Father Christmas. In fact, the only thing that remained the same is the name. It is likely that since Finland actually HAS reindeer and is located near the polar circle, the modern traditions of St. Nicholas became much easier to understand. Today, Finland is one of the few countries where Santa really asks if you’ve been good all year. And, my research indicates it is also one of the few places where Santa can be seen in the act of delivering his presents.

In China, Santa Claus is known as Shengdan Laoren. France calls him Pere Noel. Germany gets their presents from Christindl, the Christ Child. Most Spanish speaking countries receive presents from el niño Jesus, the Baby Jesus. However, Puerto Rico gets presents from the Three Kings on January sixth, also known as Epiphany.

Santa was first painted in 1870 by a newspaper artist named Thomas Nast. This painting inspired the poem “The Night Before Christmas” by Clement Moore. This poem and this picture became the definitive view of Santa Claus, and nothing I can say or do will change that. Not that I’d want to, but this image is too ingrained in our collective psyche.