Today turned out better than I thought it would be weather-wise: it was warmer than expected. I managed to get a little skiing in. More importantly, I found a very close by source for some well-seasoned birch firewood, which lit up very nicely. All that, plus a lovely beer, made for the most relaxing winter nap I've ever had this year so far. I woke up feeling a lot less Scroogey.
Also, I just finished putting up my Christmas tree tonight. . . Yes, I still call it a CHRISTMAS tree, not a friggin' "holiday tree", not a "winter season arboreal home decorum addition". . . it's a Christmas tree! I'm sure I'd be insulting some Jewish friends during Hanukkah, and looking like some kind of idiot, if I started calling their menorah a "festival candlestick". I'm pretty sure I'd be pissing off more than a few Muslims by constantly referring to the Kaaba in Mecca with some more neutralized term like a "geolithic shrine object". One way we can start showing mutual respect for the respective cultural holiday customs, traditions and practices of everyone else is to call them the names they have been given by that culture; not by whatever other stupidly contrived term that has been assigned for the sake of some ridiculous notion of "political correctness" to placate the whims of the few sanctimonious, ethno-centric, bigoted, idiots out there from some other cultures or religions who actively try to find anything to be offended about. This dumbing down and neutralizing of language only breeds more ignorance and intolerance, and alienates us even more from learning and understanding from each other. If you're so touchy and uncomfortable with the thought of some tradition encroaching on your beliefs, and too ready to affix blame and shame on someone else, it's generally a sign, even while jacked up and pious on your own beloved form of religion, that you aren't very secure somehow within the very core of yourself.
To be honest, I'm quite sure that even if Christmas didn't exist here; if the patterns and forces of colonization had been different both in Europe and this part of North America, and if the social and political history were such that Canada didn't become a primarily Christian cultured country, there most certainly would be some other lengthy celebration, involving some form of sharing, warmth, feasting, cheer, lights, and decoration to counter the depths of the coldness, darkness, and bleakness near or around the winter solstice of the year to make living in this region tolerable.
The Vikings and Norse traders were the first European settlers on the continent of North America. The pre-Christian Norse people had the tradition of Jul (Yule), which fostered a practical tradition of burning huge logs and keeping fires alight for a long time, being close together in fellowship, sharing and gift-giving, and feasting on the abundance of harvested food, and drinking and merry-making to while away the darkest, coldest and harshest part of winter (like Christmas here). Had the Norsemen settled in a more strategically advantageous spot, expanded more, and had their influence remained here long enough to become established, I'm sure that Jul would have been our practice. The pagan Celts and Anglo-Saxons had their own mid-winter celebrations, like Candlemass, and Modraniht (Mothers' night). The aboriginal people here already had their own celebrations for this season before Europeans came. If the Romans managed to totally snuff out Christianity, and had they remained in control over of the majority of Europe, aggressively expanding over the Atlantic, Saturnalia would have been the holiday here for this season, which involved lots of feasting and drinking.
Speaking of gluttony and intoxication, my favourite Christmas related anthropological theory is that of how possibly the legend of Santa's flying reindeer entered into our folklore. I was watching a documentary once about this: it seems that the shamans of the Sami (Saami) tribes, the reindeer-herding, nomadic indigenous people of Lapland, in Northern Scandinavia, had a strange and unique way of communing with their spirit world. While their reindeer herds grazed on lichens and such in the tundra, the odd one would dig up and occasionally consume an Anamita muscaria fungus, better known as the Fly Agaric mushroom. The mushroom itself is quite toxic, but also very psychoactive and hallucinogenic in diluted form. The shamans would collect and drink the urine from these intoxicated reindeer, and would go on some kind of "vision quest" with the wild dreams and sensations that resulted from its use, one of which was a sensation of flying, which was probably intensified as they rode around in their reindeer drawn sleighs with this altered state of consciousness.
Just think of that the next time you are reading T'was the Night Before Christmas to some kids, knowing that some of it is based on a pagan ritual of a piss drinking shroom high.
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