Santa Claus: Origins

Hollywood, consistently bereft of original ideas, loves prequels and “origins” stories.  In the holiday spirit I’m offering my own prequel story:  Santa.

 30-something days after Easter, in an undisclosed, secure location in Jerusalem.  Jesus meets with the Apostles, alerting them that His remaining time is short and gives them instructions on how to proceed in His absence.  In particular, He orders them to go out and spread the Word, not merely in Israel but also Turkey, Greece, and the rest of the known world.  He promises them that in a few months they will receive further instructions.  With that, He dismisses them – all except one:  Nicolas.

 “For you,” He tells Nicolas, “I have a special assignment….” And proceeds to explain.

“For these past few months I have preached peace, love, and understanding.  My reward was to be nailed to a cross.  While I know that my Apostles will be well inspired with the Holy Spirit to spread my message far and wide, I am less confident that the message will be well received.  To ensure that it is, I have the following plan.

 “As you know, I was all about giving rather than receiving.  I took not so much as a single life, but gave my own.  To remind them of my message, and to encourage them to listen, understand, and follow it, I have decided that on my birthday, December 25, instead of receiving presents, I will give them, particularly to the children.  I want you, Nicolas, to deliver these presents to the children every year on my birthday.”

Nicolas listened intently and asked, “All children, my lord Jesus?  Even those who have not obeyed your commands?”

Jesus thought for a moment, and reconsidered.  “Perhaps not.  It would be wise for you to monitor which children have been good, and which have not, and reward the former and not the latter.  We do not wish to spoil them.  For those who have not, give them something unpleasant like coal.  Oh, and for children from Holland, have Black Peter take them to Spain.”

“Black Peter?  Is he a Nubian?”

“No, he’s like us, he just has black skin.”

“…and Spain?”

“Trust me, no Dutch child wants to go to Spain.”

 Nicolas took this in, and accepted the assignment.  “I will set up an operation at the North Pole, and raise an army of elves to make these presents.   We will be outside any kingdoms and not subject to any inconvenient laws or interference.”

“Excellent.  To deliver these presents, I would suggest a sleigh, driven by eight magic flying camels.”

“Camels, my lord Jesus?  If we are at the North Pole, I would recommend reindeer instead.  They tolerate extreme cold far more than camels do.”

“Reindeer do sound better.  I was right to trust you, Nicolas, you are very sharp.”

“Thank you, my lord Jesus.  I will need one more reindeer, with a big, red nose, to light the way.  We will be flying at night.”

“Yes, that’s good.  How long do you think it will take to get this endeavor up and running?”

Nicolas shrugged, stroked his white beard, and guessed, “About 1800 years should be enough.”

“Good, make it so.  Merry Christmas!”

Christmas in Paris

As Christmas rolls by, I try to make the time-appropriate blog entry have some sort of meaning or relevance to that holiday, even if it means going out of my way to rack my brain for the most remote issue or topic...much as I do for July 4.  Well, this is this year’s feeble attempt at a seasonally appropriate blog entry.

 We celebrated Christmas in Paris from 1979 to 1989 – whoa, covered the 80s there.  1978 was the last Christmas spent in our house in Gaithersburg before moving to Paris, and by December 1990 we were back in that same house again. 

 The weather in Paris is much milder than Washington, DC area.  In summer, it rarely exceeds 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and in winter it rarely drops below freezing (though it does get cold) and almost never snows.  About the only thing I don’t like about snow is having to drive through heavy amounts of it on the roads.  Given that, in Paris, we almost never had to drive within the city itself and could get by either walking or taking the Metro, I’d say that ends up being the worst of both worlds in terms of cold weather: cold enough to be unpleasant but not cold enough for snow. 

 The news report which came on brought back memories: they said that in Paris for the holiday seasons, the city will be lit up with extravagant lighting arrangements (by that I take it they mean, MORE extravagant and elaborate than in prior years).  For my part, I do recall plenty of that when I was there, particularly lights in the trees around Ave. Matignon and the Champs Elysees, and the Eiffel Tower itself lit up.  What I remember most of all, in that regard, were the elaborate window displays at the Galeries Lafayette.  Fortunately, once we moved into Paris proper in 1984, we were now within walking distance of that immense department store.  They really knocked themselves out: fantastic window displays, with GI Joe, Smurfs, Legos, Barbie, you name it.  And not merely the stationary mannequins you’d usually see most of the year: this stuff actually MOVED (Kim Cattrall NOT included).  In fact, my dad would refer to them as “moving windows”, and us precocious little kids would correct him, “Dad, the windows themselves aren’t moving!”

 There were also chestnut sellers on the street, but I’m not a big fan of that type of nut.  Fortunately the heat was certainly enjoyable, if not the food.

 Another major deal was midnight mass.  When we were living in the US we would always go to Christmas mass on Christmas morning, which I do NOT remember fondly.  We’d have to interrupt playing with the toys to go to church, of all places.  Not fun (what does church and God have to do with Christmas?  Jesus didn’t bring me all that stuff, Santa did.  Come on!)   In Paris we went to St. Joseph’s, and one year my dad decided to try this midnight mass thing.  If we went at midnight at Christmas Eve, we’d be off the hook for mass the next morning.  Great idea!  We went with that from then on.  More recently we went back to Christmas morning mass, but the midnight mass memories from Paris are still there.  One year we braved St. Augustine’s, the church down the street from us, which didn’t seem to have heat – which is probably why we only went ONE year. 

 Actually, St. Joseph’s started out as one of these more traditional churches in the cross format with old style statues and creaky wooden pews – old enough that you couldn’t tell if the church dated from 1850 or 1920.  Then they tore the place down and redid everything as one of these ultramodern IKEA churches, spread out more like a fan (Nissan Pavilion seating – minus the mosh pit and mixing desk) with the quasi-abstract sign of the cross imagery.  Sooner or later I imagine even St Peters will get the IKEA treatment.

 Oh yeah.  I might as well throw this in.  I remember back in the 70s, while still in the US, we’d get the Sears catalog, the holiday edition as I recall.  And it would have all sorts of totally cool NFL stuff.  What we liked the most, and what we did order, were those jackets with the leather sleeves.  Of course I got the Minnesota Vikings one; at the time they still had the older “Vikings” script with the large V, instead of the newer one that’s kind of a stencil design.  Much of the currently available Vikings merchandise is still available with that logo.  They don’t sell those jackets anymore, though.  Of course my brother got the Steelers jacket, in black and yellow.  I don’t really know or understand why we should associate football, of all sports (if any) with Christmas.  Maybe it’s because NFL-related gear tended to be on our Santa’s list even back then – also because unlike baseball, for which the season ends in October before any real snow comes to the US, football reaches its peak during Christmas time.

 Hopefully everyone, everywhere – even Paris – will have a Merry Christmas this year.  Joyeux Noel!

Joyeux Noel

The true story of the “Christmas truce” of 1914 in WWI. On Christmas Eve, somewhere on the trench lines where a Scottish unit was stationed next to a French unit, peace broke out between the two sides. A German opera singer and his fiance (also an opera singer) sang for both sides; the troops came out and shared stories, alcoholic beverages, and pictures; and on Christmas Day they buried their dead and played some football. They could walk around No Man’s Land without worrying about shooting each other. Needless to say, the top brass considered all this “treason” and forbid this from ever happening again. Sure enough, it was GOOD for morale and BAD for the war. How can you shoot at men you’ve talked to in person just hours before? How can you go on when you can see how stupid the war is? When you see you have more in common with the poor soldiers on the other side than with the idiots running the war on your own? And imagine if this “truce” had occurred all the way up and down the trench line, from Switzerland to the English Channel. The war would have been over immediately; they would have faced a wholesale mutiny on all sides, German, French and British. It doesn’t take too much to imagine the soldiers telling the officers, “fuck you, if you and the top brass want a war, you can fight it yourselves!”

Clearly, soldiers who took enemy trenches could see that their foes lived in as much misery and filth as they did. Watching your own soldiers get wiped out by “friendly fire” drove home how much damage they were doing to each other. For the life of them, the soldiers could not grasp what the war was all about. Even had they been astute enough to have some idea of the assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo, that still wouldn’t explain why Germans, French and British were slaughtering each other in France. Why not just let the Austrians and Serbs murder each other – assuming the Archduke’s life was worth even that?

In “All Quiet on the Western Front”, the German soldiers casually speculate on the reason for the war. Although (with a few exceptions) they’re fairly bright soldiers, they still come up with blanks. Even the dull soldier has the common sense to realize, “I’ve never even MET an Englishman until I fought them in the trenches, and I dare say many of them would say the same about us.” Time and time again the soldiers realize, “I have no particular beef, gripe, complaint, or grudge against the opposing side, either as an aggregate country or against enemy soldiers in particular.” How can they? They’ve never even met each other.

WWII was a bit different. There, suddenly, they had ideology to motivate them – ideological motivations which were mostly absent during WWI. The Germans were motivated by regular nationalism (most Wehrmacht personnel), National Socialism (Waffen SS), and anti-bolshevism (all of them); add to this the remarkable multi-national nature of the Waffen SS, somehow able to recruit French, Belgians, Dutch, Danes, Norwegians, etc. (former enemies!) to fight against the Russians – hell, they got RUSSIANS to fight the Russians. Again, testimony to how brutal and unpopular Stalin and the Soviet government was that there was no shortage of not only Ukrainians and other ethnic groups, but even Russians, willing to fight for the Nazis against the Red Army. For their part, the Russians were motivated by their own nationalism (for most soldiers of the Red Army) and communism (for the minority). The Allies were motivated by abstract notions of freedom and liberty; and the moral indignation became even fiercer once US troops began liberating concentration camps and discovering what the Germans were really up to all this time. The Japanese sincerely believed in their own country’s destiny to rule Asia and defeat the caucasian US/European powers. Of course, WWII was also a dynamic war, with no stalemates on any front. Men died, but in the course of attacking and defending, not this business of thousands dead for a few inches of strategically inconsequential mud. The front moved too fast for soldiers to worry too much about how their enemies were dealing with it.

And in Iraq today there is no connection between the US troops and the insurgents they fight against. The insurgents don’t see us as normal human beings trying to make Iraq a better place, we’re just occupiers. And our troops aren’t inclined to view the insurgents as normal human beings trying to liberate their own country, they’re just a bunch of sick fucks (which they are). The cultural and religious differences are too much between the sides to permit the kind of fraternization which occurred in No Man’s Land on Christmas Day in 1914, to occur in Iraq today.

Consider this, too: in the US, we have Protestants, Catholics, Jews, etc. all living together peacefully without killing each other (Northern Ireland is a different story). Yet in Iraq there is civil war beween Sunnis and Shi’ites – sects of the SAME RELIGION! If Sunnis and Shi’ites can’t get along with each other, how can Muslims possibly relate to, much less peacefully coexist with, other religions? More directly, how can the Muslim insurgents ever relate to the US soldiers? We’re talking about fanatics by their nature. But at least us Americans and Europeans can enjoy our own peace and Christmas.