Why Do We Love the Krampus?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Are you ready to taste the demon? [00:00:03] Speaker B: To. [00:00:10] Speaker A: When you see his angry little face, it's like, aw, he's so mad. What happened? Shadow. [00:00:15] Speaker B: He's so mad. [00:00:17] Speaker A: Poor Shadow. [00:00:18] Speaker B: I love him. [00:00:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So welcome to another dreary episode of the Demon Toast podcast, the podcast for Death Wish Poetry magazine. I'm King Loki. We talk about horrific literature and gothic literature and the cool people behind it, and in this case, the entities behind it who are concerned with it. With me, RCA and Adrian, as before. [00:00:40] Speaker B: Hello. [00:00:41] Speaker C: Hello. [00:00:42] Speaker A: Yeah, we're here to talk about that time, you know, the undertaker through mankind off the hell in the cell back in 94, and he fell 16ft through the announcers table. That was pretty. Oh, no. Fuck. Wrong show. Yes, we're here to talk about the Christmas devil himself. The Krampus. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Krampus. [00:01:00] Speaker A: And why we love the Krampus, you know? [00:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:01:04] Speaker A: I learned quite a bit because prior to this, I had heard about the Krampus as this bizarre thing they did in Austria. And some kickass movie that came in came out in 2015, and, you know, Santa Claus is weird enough for me, so I was like, whoa, man, we got. We got Christmas devils too. I'm in. Fuck, yeah. Halloween's. Halloween's going on forever. So I don't know what you guys think about the Krampus. You love the Krampus like, I do. [00:01:25] Speaker C: I love Krampus. I think he's actually kind of cute. [00:01:30] Speaker B: But that's me. [00:01:32] Speaker A: I mean, me and Adrian are confirmed monster fuckers. Like, we would leave our entire life for the Frankenstein monster. Frankie, want to go to Vegas? Cool. Let's do it, man. [00:01:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I'd be all about it. [00:01:43] Speaker B: What's so funny is how there were some, like, depictions of Krampus. Like, you know, he's. We'll get into the whole lore, but, like, you know, typically depicted, like, you know, giving out the corporal punishment to children, but, like, there are images of him also doing that to scantily clad women. So, like, if that's your kink, if that's your thing, then, like, I could definitely see why there's, like. That makes. He's kind of cute. Like, punish me, daddy. [00:02:10] Speaker C: Oh, my. Yeah, with those chains. [00:02:13] Speaker B: But yeah, of course. Of course we love Krampus. It's a way to keep the spooky season just forever going and never dying. [00:02:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I mean, like, you know, again, I'm someone who. I didn't. So funny. Fun fact, I do love Santa Claus, but mostly because he's a fucking weirdo. When I was younger, I was afraid of Santa Claus because my mother, my grandmother was going to take me to see Santa Claus. She got me a fucking coloring book. It was a whole thing. My mother finds out, she's like, fuck, I don't want. I don't want Danny going to the Santa Claus. And, you know, so it turns into this whole fight. I don't know anything about this. I'm on the floor playing with Batman's, and my mother takes me aside and says, listen, your grandmother's gonna take you to see Santa Claus, okay? And I need you to know something. He's a child molester. [00:02:56] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:02:57] Speaker A: Santa Claus is gonna sit you on his lap, he's gonna promise you toys, and then he's gonna touch you. And, yeah, that was Santa Claus to me for a good long time. [00:03:05] Speaker B: So, yeah, I mean, honestly, it is like, really creepy to think about. Like, there's this old bearded dude who watches you 247 and. Yeah. Like, is manipulating your behavior. [00:03:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:22] Speaker B: And it's gonna, like, give you nice things if you do. [00:03:24] Speaker C: Who sneak into your house. [00:03:26] Speaker B: Like, actually creepy. [00:03:27] Speaker C: Like, sit in this old man's lap and he's gonna give you presents. Like, it's great. [00:03:32] Speaker A: Maybe it's like, what is with the lap setting, though? [00:03:34] Speaker B: Because that actually is not okay. Like, why is that part of it? [00:03:39] Speaker C: It's so gross. I don't know. It's. It's just kind of wrong. I don't know. [00:03:43] Speaker A: I mean, we'll talk about the development of Santa Claus, of course, but I don't know, thinking about it now, like, I've always thought of Yahweh, at least the weird evangelical American version of Yahweh, as, like, this old man with an AK47 up in heaven. You know, maybe Santi Claus is, like, priming kids for that, like, horrible dread. I don't. [00:04:01] Speaker B: No, actually, you're. You're not wrong because GK Chesterton literally, specifically is quoted saying that he literally. There's, like, a whole thing. I don't know if it's an essay or what, but GK Chesterton literally said the reason why it's important to teach children about Santa Claus when they're little is because it primes them and lays a foundation for them to understand and believe in God. [00:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah. That's also the takeaway of the Hogfather by Mr. Pratchett. You know, where, you know, death is kind of like, we need Santa Claus. Well, we need the Hogfather because it teaches kids this little lie. Teaches kids the big lies. Like justice and, you know. [00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:42] Speaker A: Capitalism. I don't know. It's been a while. [00:04:44] Speaker C: He wasn't cynical at all. It's good. [00:04:47] Speaker A: Oh, Terry Pratchett. Fuck, no. You kidding? Yeah. No, he was sincere, bro. No, but. But Christmas time has always been this ambivalent time for me. Like, I, you know, I'm the kind of person. I see Rudolph as conformist bullshit. You know, like, oh, Rudolph is ostracized because he has the red nose. Fuck that guy. Oh, we need him now, you know? [00:05:02] Speaker B: Oh, he's useful. Yeah. [00:05:04] Speaker A: They begrudgingly let him lead Santa's fucking train. And they act like it's a whole frosty the Snowman. Fucking sucks. I like the Grinch. He. He's a bad motherfucker. [00:05:14] Speaker C: I love the Grinch. Especially narrated by Boris Karloff. [00:05:18] Speaker A: Yeah. My hero. [00:05:19] Speaker B: The Grinch is the own. One of the only characters around holiday time that I'm like, that dude knows what's up. Like, he actually. He's right. [00:05:27] Speaker A: Yes. [00:05:28] Speaker B: Everyone else is wrong. [00:05:29] Speaker A: He's as cuddly as a cactus. That's such a great. Such a great simile. I mean, that is Dr. Seuss, though, so. Yeah, but yeah, no, you mentioned the Krampus carton, so we should talk about Krampus. [00:05:40] Speaker B: Mm. [00:05:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:42] Speaker B: So. [00:05:42] Speaker A: Good old Krampus. [00:05:43] Speaker C: So. [00:05:46] Speaker A: Right. So, you know, so I have a few things in my notes here. Bad Gostin, Heiming. Tyrol. These are places in Austria and Germany where to this day and going back several hundred years, they make their own masks out of wood. They make these, like, fucking extremely shaggy coats, bells, chains. And they go around as monsters and run through the towns. [00:06:12] Speaker C: They even chase people still. [00:06:14] Speaker A: They chase people. They also have little battles. They wrestle in the snow. And there are different troops. They're like football hooligans. When they meet each other, two of them will lock horns and slam into each other. And because of the Catholic nature of a lot of these towns, there will often be a Saint Nick leading the troops. No one ever wants to play St. Nicholas, by the way. St. Nick isn't supposed to be drinking and no one. People want to dress like the monster. They don't want to fucking do the fucking goddamn thing, you know? In fact, going back a few centuries, a lot of towns that were doing these. These Krampus runs the. They wouldn't have St. Nick. The church would be like. They would send the bishop occasionally. He'd be like, where's St. Nick? I don't see St. Nick. You know, it's a very involved ritual. They go from house to house around Christmas time. I have the exact dates, but it really doesn't matter. It's not important. [00:06:59] Speaker B: It is actually. It is actually important because it's directly related to St. Nick. So Krampus knocked. Right. Like the night of Krampus is the night before St. Nicholas's feast day. So it's. They're literally like. Yeah, they're. They're at odds with one another. So Krampus visits the night before. So if you were a naughty child, you got a visit from him. And then if you were a good child on. On December 6th on that morning, you would have little trinkets, usually like oranges and chocolates and little goodies from St. Nick. So, yeah, December 5th is Krampus and then December 6th is St. Nick. [00:07:37] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough. I will say that based on my reading in Alvred Knorr's book, the Krampus and the Old Dark Christmas. It does vary by region, though. There are some towns where they go in and they put on a whole show where the Krampus tries to chase the kids and they play what's called the table game, where the parents and the kids are on one side of the table. And the Krampuses. Krampus. It's kind of fun because, like, we think of Krampus as a character, but. [00:08:00] Speaker B: It'S actually like a category. [00:08:02] Speaker A: Yes, yes. It's like Dracula versus Vampire. Dracula's a guy. Vampires are a thing. They're a species. So, like, you'll have several Krampuses trying to pull the table aside to get at the kids, and St. Nick will eventually walk over and whack them and be like, you better be good next year, kids, you know? Yeah. So you were talking about the Krampus carton, which is a pretty fun part of the culture around Krampus in Germany specifically. And there are these little postcards. They look like old Coca Cola ads, but they're much older. And it's like Krampus like, you know, with his little horns and his. His furry body and his sack and his switches that he uses to beat kids, chasing kids, carrying them away or harassing Book some nice ladies, scantily dressed. Yeah. So yeah, Krampus is like a fun thing. It's a regional bit of weirdness. [00:08:55] Speaker C: The specific switches he used are made of birch, by the way. Because I know that stuff that is. [00:09:01] Speaker A: True and you know that stuff. They're different. Like, they're different characters. There's. There. There's a tradition of the. The Christkind, which is the Christ child. It's like, it's a. It's a specific tradition where they have a female child dressed like an angel with a little crown and that'll be the Christ child and she'll accompany Krampus sometimes. I don't know. [00:09:20] Speaker B: So the Christkind came directly as a result of the Protestant Reformation. That was like one of those things that happened when Protestant Reformation started and Luther had his 99 theses and one of them was, you know, against the Catholic Church was like the worship quote unquote of saints. And so he was like, we shouldn't be doing this. And so Chriskind was like the replacement for St. Nicholas basically, so served us very similar purpose. But it was a result of wanting to distance, you know, put distance between like worship of saints and, you know. That's interesting, having those traditions. [00:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. I think that like as the centuries have rolled on, it's mattered less and less and like they just have these things now. It's just. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's like, it's like Americana. It's like Christian, whatever. Christian. Narish Kite. I don't know, it's like, oh, The Christ child, St. Nick, Krampus, whatever. [00:10:12] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. But back then it was, it really mattered. I was really aboard to these people. [00:10:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:20] Speaker B: And I, I don't know, I just, I find the whole, the whole concept of Krampus is very interesting because I think nowadays we see Krampus through a modern lens and it feels very folklorish, it feels very pagan almost. But the reality is it was really tightly interwoven with Christianity as it was developed. Now we can of course, like look back and say, like, I'm sure, you know, there are through lines of previous, you know, pagan traditions and rituals and things of that nature in that region during that time of year. It was winter, it was cold, you know, and there is evidence for some sort of various different types of like then rituals and things that involved kind of like, you know, donning masks and trying to like scare away the, the bad energies and bad spirits that might make it a harsher winter than not. But ultimately like Krampus itself, like all the written kind of history that we have about it is like pretty interwoven with Christianity because it's like, it's the anti Saint Nick basically. So I don't know, I just find that kind of interesting how nowadays it seems to be very much like embraced as like by people who are not really practicing Christians, but ultimately it has a very Christian origin. [00:11:44] Speaker C: Do you think that's because it's kind of like an, like an almost fight against, like, consumerism with Christmas these days, like why people are so completely fascinated with it now. [00:11:56] Speaker B: Yeah, a huge part of it. Yeah, I think so. [00:11:59] Speaker C: Because that's supposed to be like the morality part of, like the Christmas holiday is if you're bad, Krampus is gonna either eat you or drag you to hell. [00:12:09] Speaker A: You know, I think it's also kind of an affront to, like, this veneer of decency that a lot of, like, mainstream Christian people think they have, you know? [00:12:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:19] Speaker A: And it's like, well, here's this, like, this, this brutish devil that drags kids to hell. That's pretty cool. You don't like that? I like it. [00:12:27] Speaker B: It is, it's, you know, it's. It's taboo. It's offbeat. So. So, yeah, I think people are going to be like, ooh, I like it because he looks like a devil. [00:12:36] Speaker A: I do want to comment on. I'm not pushing back because I think you're correct. A lot of things get subsumed and eaten by Christianity and then get turned into mindless Borg drones. You know, most, you know, most saint characters have origins as pagan, as deities. Pagan deities. So, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, like, even St. Nick, he's barely a historical figure. I mean, they have, they have his bones, but who knows what they are? Who the fuck knows? [00:12:59] Speaker B: The quote unquote history of Saint Nick is extremely loosely. I mean, we don't really know and. [00:13:05] Speaker A: We will get to that. But I do want to quote this book. This book is kind of full of shit. It quotes a lot from the Golden Bough, which is largely discredited by modern sociologists, but there is some good history in it. Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men, where this nice, this, this, this person who wrote this book, Phyllis Siefker, tries to tie Santa Claus to, and, you know, an ancient ritual involving killing a king every eight years. I don't know. It doesn't matter. What does matter is this bit here. Satan dons first chapter four, Right. So she's talking about basically how in Europe they had these rituals where they would don horns and animal furs around the winter time in anticipation of the harvest because the earth was dying. And they would run around as monsters and they would act out these little plays where the beast would be. Cap, the beast man would be captured, brought back to town and killed, usually after being seduced by a woman. Right. And therefore civilized. And then he would return to life at the end of the play. A goat skinned man with cloven hooves, beard, horns, humpback and stick. Before Pope Gregory's reign, from 590 to 604, the Christian devil had been considered angelic looking. I'm gonna skip a bit. The earliest church pictures of Satan occur in the 6th century in miniatures and frescoes where he could be distinguished from the other beautiful angels only by the fact that he is falling. There is none of the animal nature, physical deformity and licentiousness of later depictions. That didn't officially start until the 7th century when Gregory the Great described Satan as having hooves and horns, a black color, weather controlling powers and just top it all off, a terrible stench. I can keep going, but basically it goes on to talk about these masquerades they had in the fifth, the 570s. The Council of Auxerre tried to ban these devilish charms, as they called them. They have that ecclesiastical laws of England where they prohibited people disguising as wild animals. You know, people wearing hooves, skins, beast masks, you know, werewolf laws probably contributed to that. But I do think that there is a pagan undercurrent there that. I mean, the Krampus at least superficially resembles that. And you know, we're talking like 1400 years ago, you know, and we can go back further. I will go back further later in this episode, but for now I think that's a good place to look at it because you have the church directly saying, no more of this fucking pagan shit. It's the devil, we don't care. Liz, what the devil looks like. It looks like that. He looks like a guy wearing goat horns. [00:15:30] Speaker B: Well, what I find interesting is that with the Krampus thing is that initially like the very earliest kind of like embodiments of Krampus, when people would dress up like as that entity. Right, because it's a category, not a specific person. It was just maybe like putting ash on their face or like some very simple masks. The horns were added later when Christianity started blending more into this region. And then they were like, yeah, it was what you just said. It was like, oh, we don't like this pagan thing. Like, you know, make it, make it the devil and then it will make sense in our brains kind of. [00:16:06] Speaker A: Yeah, they had wild hunt festivities in like Norway and stuff where people would throw ash on their faces and they'd run around as if they were Odin's ghostly train. The priests would talk about it as if like they'd actually seen dead people in the woods and people were conjuring Them. And, you know, that's all just propaganda, of course. [00:16:24] Speaker B: Classic, classic propaganda campaigns. [00:16:27] Speaker A: We love the Catholic Church. I think that the Krampus appeals to us because we, a degree, have some religious trauma. Right. I mean, I think all three of us can speak to. You know, even though I'm, you know. [00:16:37] Speaker B: I. I think societally the whole society has religious trauma, whether or not they want to admit it. [00:16:43] Speaker C: Agreed. [00:16:44] Speaker A: You wouldn't know by their voting record. [00:16:46] Speaker B: But that's what I mean. It's. It's. It's buried. They don't even acknowledge that it's there. [00:16:52] Speaker A: So, yeah, I'm just gonna transition over to the Krampus movie. Have you guys seen it? [00:16:57] Speaker B: Yes, I have. Yes. [00:16:59] Speaker A: So, like, you know, does the Krampus movie replace Gremlins as the greatest Christmas movie of all time? [00:17:04] Speaker C: I think it's pretty fantastic. And it totally warped my mom. I had my mom watch it with me and now she just can't even like everything with her. She's like, I can't even look at a Krumpus. Like, oh, my God. She's like, you ruined Christmas forever. I was like, good for me. [00:17:19] Speaker A: You did a good job. You're doing Odin's work. [00:17:22] Speaker B: I love it. I do love Gremlins, though. [00:17:24] Speaker C: I know. [00:17:25] Speaker B: Don't make me choose. [00:17:26] Speaker C: No, that's not a choice anyone should have to make. [00:17:29] Speaker A: No, I love them both. Gremlins has one of my favorite lines because both of these movies expose the hypocrisy of, you know, the idea people have of Christmas where, you know, I don't know, Billy Peltzer, whatever his name is, is trying to talk to the girl and he's like, christmas, man. And she's like, listen, I don't fucking like this holiday. Some people are opening presents, other people are opening their wrists. And that's just the truth of the matter. The Krampus is a little more direct with what it's doing. You have. I always forget these people's names. Adam Scott. [00:17:55] Speaker B: Yes. [00:17:56] Speaker C: I love Adam Scott. [00:17:57] Speaker A: He's the guy that laughs at his own. [00:17:58] Speaker B: Adrian's gonna know all of your answers. Yes, I know. [00:18:00] Speaker C: Adam Scott and Toni Collette. [00:18:02] Speaker A: Is he the one who laughs at his own jokes or is that a different guy? [00:18:05] Speaker C: He does sometimes. He was in Parks and Recs. He is also in Big Little Lies. He has a really good nose. That's all I'm gonna say. I don't even like him. [00:18:14] Speaker B: It's piece. [00:18:15] Speaker A: It's cool. Well, okay. Well, whatever. I mean, you have this. Yeah, it's pretty great. I don't know what to say to all that. Anyway, what the hell did I write about this fucking movie? Oh, yeah, it has. Yeah. The movie's got this theme of ugliness to it beneath the veneer of, like, beauty. Like, when the. When the demonic toys show up, shout out to Charles Band. When the demonic toys show up, they're not actually killer toys, they're monsters wearing toys. I think that's really, really cool and good. You're not. You're not bad enough to see that, are you? [00:18:53] Speaker C: You know, I thought that was so cool that he was literally wearing Santa's face like a skinned Santa. I don't know. I thought that was, like, super cool and super interesting and definitely showing the ties between Krampus and Santa. Like they're two sides of the same coin almost, you know? [00:19:12] Speaker A: Yeah. He's described as the shadow of St. Nick. And, like, you have, like, you know, kind of a typical story Christmas movie setup of, like, no one wants to be there, but instead of learning the meaning of Christmas, they're horribly punished for their hypocrisy, which is like, I love it. It's great. I will say that that movie deserves, like, an Oscar for its monster design, its sound design. The director would go on to direct, you know, the greatest film of all time, King of the Monsters, Michael Dogherty. I'm a big fan of that movie. I don't care what anyone says. It's an opera about monsters, and I think that's pretty metal. [00:19:45] Speaker B: That really is. Actually. [00:19:46] Speaker C: I loved Mothra in that so much, I thought she was beautiful. [00:19:50] Speaker A: So she was really pretty and she had. He's a very. He's a very clever guy is what I'm saying. The movie comes off as, like, very stupid and tongue in cheek Krampus. But, like, you know, you have, like, the fat kid getting stolen by, you know, gingerbread men and all that good stuff. So I don't know, like, a lot of people will write it off, right? And I mean, academics. Like, the guy who wrote this book, he writes off the Krampus. He sees it as deleterious, but that's because he himself is trying to uplift the traditions of Krampus. And he's kind of a traditionalist. And he's like, oh, this movie's fucked. It reflects the American misunderstanding and the commodification of Krampus. But I do think that art is a. Is a conversation. And you can learn a lot about a culture by looking at its trashiest pop culture. [00:20:31] Speaker B: And I think, well, what's really interesting too, is like how powerful of an effect though, that pop culture does have on the way that, like, even if it's like completely detached from the origins and it's not true to the history of whatever it's based on, like, if done well, somehow or another, some of these things get stuck and like caught into the zeitgeist and it's like, oh, well, that's what Krampus is. And it just becomes that. I don't know that this film that we're talking about was widely consumed enough to do that. I do think that there's like a broader exposure to Krampus for most people, you know, most modern people, that I think that we have like a variety of different understandings of like, what Krampus is and all of that, because not a lot of people are super into horror. It's kind of still a niche, you know. So I don't think that, like enough people have consumed that movie that it's like forever changed, like the. What people think Krampus is, if that makes sense. It does. [00:21:33] Speaker A: And I think that you're right. I mean, case in point, Santi Claus. I mean, he didn't look like a fat weirdo in a red coat until fucking Coca Cola made that ad. And I don't know, somehow that was. [00:21:43] Speaker B: Honestly, it was. It was the book, the Night Before Christmas. [00:21:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. The po. [00:21:47] Speaker B: Santa Claus. Almost everything that we associate about Santa came from that book. [00:21:53] Speaker C: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. [00:21:56] Speaker A: The poem. [00:21:58] Speaker B: Yeah, the poem. Sorry. Which has, you know, been turned into many, many books. [00:22:03] Speaker A: Is it worth reading? [00:22:05] Speaker B: Is it worth reading? Well, only if we're transitioning into Santa. Are we ready? Are we ready to go there? Or do we have more we need to say about this film before moving on? [00:22:14] Speaker A: We could talk about Krampus a little bit more. I mean, I read this book, Krampus the Yule Lord. Did you guys look at it? [00:22:20] Speaker B: I didn't. [00:22:20] Speaker A: That's okay. So this was written by the artist who goes by Brahm. So this book, essentially, it's a little bit like American Gods. It takes place in this world where the deities sort of are reflections or echoes of what people used to believe. And Krampus himself is. He's depicted as the grandchild of Loki, the Norse God, who, you know, don't know anything about that. But yeah, basically he's inherited Loki's whole deal and Santa Claus is Baldr, Odin's son. And the whole thing is that like, Ragnarok happened and it sucked and everyone went away. But to keep going, Baldr got with the times and assumed the identity of St. Nick. And because Baldr was this God of love and light and resurrection, he saw becoming this wintertime deity, or wintertime folk character, as it were, and bringing cheer to small children and a time of darkness as the best way to keep going, really. And what's interesting about this book is it genders Big G God as a female, which means that the deity in this book is not Yahweh, Allah, or whatever the fuck you want to call him. You know, which. Which is interesting, right? Because, you know, Neil Gaiman being Jewish, he didn't even. Like in American Gods, he didn't even look at Jesus, which I think was myopic and kind of. It raises a lot of questions. I get it, I understand why. But it's called American Gods. Where's George Washington? You know, I'm just saying, like, seriously, like, I do think that this book is a little less up its own ass. Yeah. So what Krampus does is he's. When he's freed, his initial thing, apart from destroying all the Christmas trees, he sees. His thing is to. Is to expose Santa's hypocrisy because he sees Santa as having stolen the winter season and making it about something that really doesn't matter. And Crepus's desire is to unleash, you know, people's primal spirits and encourage them to live better, fuller lives. And it's a really good book. In fact, I have this beautiful quote from it I'm just gonna read because I thought it was. It was lovely. It's just before Krampus time is up and he has to have his big battle with Santa Claus. And it is a big battle. It's very bloody. You know, Santa actually loses the first time, so he comes back with two angels. You know, it's. It's that. It's that Christian cheating, you know, Jesus. Jesus shows up in hell and they're like, this is our house. And he's like, I've got, you know, eminent domain or whatever. I'm taking these souls. Right? So Krampus didn't laugh or smile. His gaze returned to the flame. I am fearful. Most men of this age are like you. They have forgotten what it is to huddle in a hut with the beasts and demons howling outside their door. They no longer have want of a great and terrible spirit to protect them. They have lost their fear of the wild and with it their need to believe. And I cannot blame them, for they now have the power to chase Away the shadows with the mere flick of a switch. So I must ask myself, what role can I play in a world where men worship the moving picture box? Where they make and consume potions that eat away their own brains, where they ravage and pillage entire mountains, kill the very earth itself? Mankind has lost its connection to the land, to the earth, to the beasts and spirits. They gather their food not from the forests and fields, but from plastic bins and ice boxes. Their lives are no longer tied to the cycles of the seasons and the harvest. No longer do they need the Yule Lord. That's Krampus. So pretty good book. Do recommend it. And I think that, frankly, I mean, this does a better job of characterizing Mr. Krampus than, you know, the movie does, but I think it also reflects the same anarchic, rebellious spirit. And it is very American in its way. I mean, you know, to a degree. I mean, as America goes, so the world. Right. So not to be American centric, but here we are, right? I mean. [00:26:08] Speaker B: Mm. [00:26:10] Speaker A: Adrian, you live in a right wing hellhole, so you're feeling it too. So bad you live in Texas. [00:26:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I do, I do. And I have to for quite a while now. [00:26:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:23] Speaker C: It's not tragic at all. It's fine. [00:26:25] Speaker B: It's interesting. I really liked that, the excerpt that you just read. I find it interesting because, you know, especially the imagery itself of Krampus. You would look at that and go, that's a villain, right? And that's a monster. That's a bad guy. But it kind of brings a layer of complexity to this character, you know, being kind of like the voice piece for calling out the hypocrisy of, you know, various different things. Whether we're talking about consumerism or, you know, being detached from the land or all the various, you know, criticisms that were just laid out there. It's kind of interesting. [00:26:59] Speaker A: That's what a good devil or a good villain should do. Like, in the Middle Ages, they would have their Christmas plays and they would be very bloody. There's an old Shakespeare line we don't wish to undo out Herod. Herod himself. Right. And it's because at the Christmas plays, Herod used to be a character. He would, you know, he would be, I will kill all the firstborn children. And sometimes Satan would show up with the Antichrist in tow. And like, in fact, interestingly enough, the devil had this thing, they called it the devil's ruckus, I believe, where he would go, ho, ho, ho. Obviously this. This book makes a Bigger deal out of it than I think is worth because that's just like, dumb laughter. [00:27:39] Speaker C: Well, I do think it's interesting that Krampus translates to Claus. And Santa Claus became. Well, St. Nicholas became Santa Claus. So it's like two different versions of kind of the same name, which I found. [00:27:56] Speaker B: Well, I'm a great time to transition. [00:28:00] Speaker A: I'm so happy you mentioned that. So before I point out that Nicholas is an old German name for the devil, let's talk about Pelsnickel. Ca. Do you know about Pelsnickel? [00:28:11] Speaker B: Mmm. Get into it. Maybe I do. [00:28:14] Speaker A: Sure. Let's talk about it. So, yeah, So a lot of people think that Santy Kloss was brought over by, I don't know, these Dutch settlers. Right. Actually not true. [00:28:22] Speaker B: That's not true. That was an actual. Just somebody made that up. [00:28:26] Speaker A: It was actually our favorite guy, Washington Irving. [00:28:30] Speaker B: It was Washington Irving. Thank you. I was like, I know who it was, but my brain was not letting me know. Thank you. [00:28:36] Speaker A: I'm usually gonna know anyway. Yeah, he wrote this, like, racist thing called the Knickerbocker Chronicle or whatever. Knickerbocker History, where he depicts these. These Dutch settlers as these provincial morons. And being provincial and simple, of course they're Catholic. I love how, like, mean Christians are to each other. It makes no sense because, like, from where I'm sitting, y'all believe the same thing. I'll believe in that Jesus guy. I mean, up with that. But yeah, so they would not have brought St. Nick over because they weren't fucking Catholic. Catholics are the ones who do the saint worship stuff. Yeah, that was their. Yeah, that was their big gambit to win over pagans, you know, and they still do it because they don't know any better. So actually, Pentacles was brought over by the. What's it called, the German settlers who brought over Black Peter. Shvartza Pete. [00:29:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. So Black Peter came from the Netherlands. I wanted to get that part right. I was like, where did Black Peter come from? I think. Right, The Netherlands. [00:29:38] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right. I said German, but, yeah, you're right. [00:29:42] Speaker B: Okay. But also, it's kind of like. Okay, the reason he was black was because he was said to have come from, like, the Turkish area and what they would call the moors. [00:29:52] Speaker A: The moors. [00:29:53] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:29:54] Speaker A: It is. So it is an example of blackface, but, you know. [00:29:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:29:59] Speaker A: It's not quite the same tradition as minstrel shows and that kind of racism, but it's still not great. [00:30:06] Speaker B: It's not great. But, yeah, I mean, I was like, Americans weren't the only ones to do super racist things. But as you said, it's. It's slightly different. Like, it wasn't necessarily, like, specifically meant to, you know, denigrate. But anyway. Yeah, so they. I don't know, it was. It was interesting just hearing that Black Peter, there was all these, like, theories about, like, the history of it, basically. Some say that he was like a Moor. Some also say that he was like an Ethiopian slave of some sort. [00:30:38] Speaker A: It goes back and forth. Yeah. It's hard to trace because it's so old. They just sort of do it. [00:30:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:30:46] Speaker A: Well, my point was that Pelsnickel was. [00:30:49] Speaker B: I know what you're saying now because in my brain it's Belsnickel, but it's also Pels. So I was like. I feel like my brain wants to pick up now. I know. [00:30:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had. We had these German settlers who settled in Pennsylvania and. Belsnickel, Pelsnickel. Same thing, really. I mean, it's just a. It's a. It's a regional difference. But what that translates to is Furry Nicholas. And there was no St Nicholas there. It was just like, you know, a bro wearing animal furs and horns and banging on windows and scaring kids, I guess on St. Peter's Day. I'm not sure, but St. Peter. I'm sorry, St. Nicholas's Day. [00:31:24] Speaker B: St. Nicholas Day. Yeah. So, like, I think that's the thing. Black Peter was like a companion of Belsnickel, and, like, he was the one that would give out the coal if you were bad. So again, it's like these things always seem to happen in. There's always like an alternate. There's the good one, the Belsnickel or the St. Nick. And then there's the bad one, you know, whether it's Krampus or Black Peter. And there's like, if you're good, you get this. If you're bad, you get that. [00:31:49] Speaker A: Except that. Except that Santa Claus himself wasn't really a thing until. Twas the Night Before Christmas. [00:31:55] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So we're kind of just. These are all sort of like, laying the foundation for almost just the framework of this whole concept. You know, we're seeing, like, how in different various regions and then how it got over here to America. But there seems through it all that there's always been some sort of concept at this time of year, for there's a framework there that if you were good, good things will happen to you. If you were Bad, bad things will happen to you. And I don't know if we did this yet. Well, I don't think we did this yet. I don't know if maybe now is the time to do that. But if we want to go back further. So where we are now, we've talked about, you know, Krampus and St. Nick over in, you know, the Germanic Slavic regions. And then we're talking now about Netherlands and Norse regions and how they've got balsnickel. They brought that in German, right? They brought that over here. And these are embodied in two different beings, right? We have the good guy and the bad guy prior to that. And this is where I want to talk about Frau Perchte, because this is a being that predates of these stories and she is a deity from that just entire, like Germanic Slavic region who. She was both embodied in one being. She was both. So she would go through right around this time and like, assess the home. And if the home was tidy, there's all these different things associated. So it could be. Some of it was like, is the home tidy? Is your loom work completed? Have you been faithful to the traditions? Have you been, you know, basically like doing what you're supposed to be doing? You know, all your shelves stocked, all of that. And if she assessed your home and it was good, then she would leave you like a silver coin or some blessing of some sort. And if it wasn't so the tradition says, you know, you would. You would be punished. And, well, you say the punishment was quite gruesome. It was, it was said that she would literally slice open your guts and stuff you with straw and stuff. Now this is clearly a cautionary tale that is very well, you know, related to. It's to increase work ethic and productivity leading up to wintertime. Because in this region, winter was harsh and if you didn't do what you were supposed to do, things were not going to go well for you that winter. And so this was motivation to make sure that you did stock your shelves, that you did, you know, spin your wool so that you had enough yarn to make those warm clothing and you kept your home ready for the harsh winter. So this was a cautionary tale about that whole entire concept. And we have to talk about her because it's. It's almost. And there's other characters that are similar to that in various different regions up in the north northern hemisphere, but it's all the same thing, right? It's the framework, it's the foundation for this understanding of, hey, winter's coming winter's hard and it's harsh, and you will be punished if you haven't done what you were supposed to do. So this concept of being good or being naughty, prior to this morality that Christianity brought into it, prior to there being like a moral piece to that, it was simply about industry. It was about, did you do what you had to do to not die this winter? Right. Did you collect enough food and do you have enough warm clothing to get yourself through and. Yeah. So I think that's kind of interesting. [00:35:30] Speaker A: It is interesting. And the Perchta herself, she had different. As you said, she had different names. She was called Hulda, which means holy. She was called Unholda. As you know, it became stigmatized. But the big takeaway is that she became more and more monstrous as time went on. Eventually we had to leave out greasy food for her to take off her iron gloves so she wouldn't be able to take you to hell or whatever it was she was doing. And eventually she became called the perch 10, which is no different from the Krampus at that point, because now she's wearing. Now she has horns, she has an iron nose, and she's essentially a monstrous witch that wants to steal children away. Adrian, did you have something to add about good old Hold Up? [00:36:10] Speaker C: I just think it's interesting with the whole thing of, you know, like, leaving food out and stuff like that, because that's basically what kids do today for Santa. [00:36:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:19] Speaker B: I mean, they would leave her wine, they would leave her a little offering of some sort. [00:36:24] Speaker C: It's the same as leaving stuff out for the fairies, too. Like, you leave out offerings so that bad things don't happen. [00:36:31] Speaker A: It's funny, in the Krampus book, actually, when Krampus visits the children, he gives them. He gives them little bits of gold, and he tells them, like, what I want you to do is tell your friends to leave out candy for me in your shoes. And if you do that, next year I'll bring you more gold, which is. [00:36:48] Speaker C: Maybe where the stockings came from. [00:36:50] Speaker A: I mean. I mean, people used to leave out candy for Sleipnir, Odin's horse, and, you know, tun gris, near and Tanjostir, which are Thor's goats, because they believe they might fly over. I mean, it's. It's pretty common, you know. [00:37:02] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:02] Speaker A: I mean, Scandinavia was the last place to be Christianized. So I'm not surprised that a lot of Scandinavian traditions surrounding their gods, like Baldr with the yule log and of course, the evergreen symbolizing Baldur's return to life after Ragnarok. I'm not surprised that they kind of got, you know, subsumed and brought over to America when people came from the Netherlands. [00:37:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:37:26] Speaker A: Perchta is an interesting character, though. I mean, there's a lot about her. Like in this book, for instance, it's thought that she might be related to Freya or Frigga, but I've never read about Frigga explained exploring the Earth around this time. [00:37:38] Speaker B: So, yeah, there's some sort. So if we. If we draw a line between whether you pronounce it Perchta, her and Frauhalla. She also was associated with the nightly hunt. Right. The Wild Hunt. And she had her own version of it where she would go and collect children. And in some stories, she was collecting the children who were. Or sick or not being taken care of. So she was seen almost as a benevolent. Benevolent in that way, where she would basically collect all of the unwanted children if they were disabled or orphaned or whatever, and take care of them. And then they just became part of her crew of wild hunt people that would go out at night. And it was. It was more of a benevolent story. So, I mean, I could go on and on because I. There's just like, there's so many legends and there's so many stories. And it is interesting how we see the morphing of these legends and these stories and how different time periods affect which pieces of these legends folks will hone in on and expand upon. [00:38:44] Speaker A: Mm, yeah. I mean, I'm. You know, there's also the Strega, which is an Italian crone who would go door to door. It was believed she would ask for alms and, you know, she might have children with her. Also. I do think that it is an interesting takeoff of the Wild Hunt to have orphaned children being taken to her castle or wherever it is she lives in some places. That is the Krampus. That's what they're doing. Krampus is thought to be derived from a shriveled. As if he is a dead spirit himself. I don't know. It's pretty weird. I think it's pretty cool, personally. That's a jump. [00:39:24] Speaker B: And then we can get into a. [00:39:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, what department? Yeah. So there was a department store that decided to have Santa. It was like, around the time Twas the night before Christmas became popular. Kind of a miracle on 34th street, or whatever the hell that movie's called. [00:39:36] Speaker C: It is the miracle at 34th street miracle. [00:39:39] Speaker A: 34Th Street. But, like, that was a real thing. They decided to have Santa Claus there for promise, kids toys and bring people into their store. And that was kind of a big deal. [00:39:50] Speaker C: I think that was mostly Macy's. That started it, right? [00:39:54] Speaker A: I don't know. Probably. [00:39:56] Speaker B: I think so. [00:39:56] Speaker C: It was. [00:39:57] Speaker B: I think so. Mm. [00:39:58] Speaker A: I do want to point out that Father Christmas over in Britain has horns. He's not Santa Claus, by the way. All these different countries have their own, like, winter. Winter, man. And I don't. Like, I got into an argument someone, because they were saying that. No, no. They just call Santa Claus Perry Noel over in France. And I'm like, yeah, but it's not San Santa Claus. Yeah, not really. You know. [00:40:19] Speaker B: No, that's true. I. I think Santa Claus as we know it is. Was born in America. This is an American thing. Like, we did this. Yeah. [00:40:29] Speaker C: It's our mythology. [00:40:31] Speaker B: It is. Right. Like, we. We took, obviously, as all good, you know, imperialists and colonizers do. We. We took what we saw and turned it into something consumeristic. [00:40:44] Speaker C: Yes. [00:40:45] Speaker B: But I do think we need to kind of talk about this. This poem, a visit from St. Nicholas, because this really is, like, foundational to the imagery that we have that later on then was, you know, adopted by Macy's and Coca Cola and all of that marketing stuff. But it all kind of goes back to this poem. I just looked up my notes in 23. Who wants to read? Yeah, I mean, I'll take it if nobody else wants it. [00:41:15] Speaker A: I mean, go for it, man. Do it. [00:41:17] Speaker B: Okay. Come on. Where did you go? [00:41:19] Speaker A: So while you're looking for it, I do want to point out that a lot of the illustrations that followed this, they depicted Santa as, like, a weird little man. He was not wearing his red cap and his coat and all that. He looked like a. He looks like a strange little elf man with a hype. [00:41:33] Speaker C: It's exactly like. Like. Yes. [00:41:38] Speaker B: So, yeah, so if we're going with, like, the fairy folk origins, he looked more like that. Like, just like this little guy. And what's interesting is you'll actually see in this poem, like, when you really think about it, the way he's describing this film, he is kind of like an elf. Like a little. Like a little guy. Like a little fairy gnome or something. [00:41:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:55] Speaker B: And then. But then if you take those Christian origins, you know, base it on St Nicholas, he would have just been depicted like a guy, like a bishop. Well, you know, I mean, I'm going. [00:42:06] Speaker A: To insert a picture here of the St. Nick that they have running around in Austria around this time of year, like, with the beard and the Staff. And the stupid pope hat. The bishop hat. You know, that's St. Nicholas. [00:42:18] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:42:19] Speaker A: Santa Claus is this little monster, man. He's a gnome or something. Who knows what the fuck he is. [00:42:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Like, these are not the same, but it feels like they've morphed nowadays into. It's all. Yeah. Yes. All right. So, here we go. So this is a visit from St Nicholas by Clement Clark Moore. It was written in 1823. We're all familiar with it. But I'm going to read it anyway, because why not? Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. The children were nestled all snug in their beds While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads. And Mama in her kerchief and I in my cap had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap when out on the lawn there arose such a clatter I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of a new fallen snow Snow gave the luster of midday to objects below when what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer With a little old driver so lively and quick I knew in a moment it must be Saint Nick. More rapid than eagles, his coursers they came and he whistled and shouted and called them by name. Now, Dasher, now, Dancer, now Prancer and Vixen. On, Comet, on, Cupid, on Donder and Blitzen to the top of the porch, to the top of the wall now dash away, dash away, dash away all as dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly when they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky. So up to the housetop the coursers they flew with the sleigh full of Toys and St Nicholas too and then in a twinkling I heard on the roof the prancing and pawing of each little hoof As I drew in my head and was turning around down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot A bundle of toys he had flung on his back and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack his eyes, how they twinkled his dimples, how merry his cheeks were like roses his nose like a cherry his droll little mouth Was drawn up like a bow, and the beard of his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, A right jolly old elf. And I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself. A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work and filled all the stockings. Then turned with a jerk and laying his finger aside of his nose and giving a nod up the chimney he. He rose, he sprang to his sleigh, to his team, gave a whistle, and away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, Ere he drove out the sight. Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night. [00:45:24] Speaker A: And there you have it, Dressed all in fur, tarnished with ashes and soot. A right jolly old elf, which is literally. [00:45:31] Speaker B: Called him an elf, and he's tiny. A tiny sleigh, a tiny reindeer, you know. Yeah, yeah. [00:45:37] Speaker C: And you were talking earlier about how, like, some of the original Krampus stuff, like, they would cover their faces in ash, like, which is probably where they got the whole chimney thing in the first place. [00:45:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, they would still do that, except that there's, like, a culture around carving masks now, so. [00:45:52] Speaker B: Yes. [00:45:52] Speaker A: Really, really, really cool masks. [00:45:55] Speaker B: But, I mean, it's. This poem is just so iconic, and almost everything that we associate with Santa Claus now. I mean, even the fact that there were reindeer and then all of their names, like, this is doll came from this. [00:46:09] Speaker A: Yes. Is it. Is it significant that one of the reindeer is called Donder and Blitzen? Blitzen is like Donder sounds a little bit like Donner, which was the German name for Thor. I don't know. I'm just. [00:46:20] Speaker B: Mm. [00:46:21] Speaker A: I just. Yeah, I just want Thor to be there. No, I mean, for my money, I prefer the Pokemon special where Santa Claus has a bunch of ponytas pulling him around. And he goes like, no reindeer here, Wink. [00:46:34] Speaker C: You know, my son. [00:46:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, that was before it was a thing, so, you know. [00:46:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:42] Speaker A: Stantler is the reindeer Pokemon. [00:46:43] Speaker C: It is the reindeer Pokemon. [00:46:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Nobody cares. But I'm talking about it anyway because I'm a hack. [00:46:48] Speaker C: No, I know exactly what you're talking about, because my kids are, like, completely obsessed. [00:46:53] Speaker A: So. Yeah, I mean, I do like this poem and it's partly because, like, Santa Claus feels like a Peter Pan kind of character. It's like, what the fuck is this guy doing? You know, he calls him Saint Nick. [00:47:02] Speaker B: But I find that fascinating that he wrote this poem about some little elf thing that comes down the chimney and is small and is pulled by these reindeer and puts little toys into the stockings. Why on earth did he call him Saint Nicholas when what he's describing has nothing to do with this Bishop of. [00:47:24] Speaker A: Smyrna, like, artistic license? I don't know. I mean, so here's where I'm gonna go, because at the end of the day, I don't really give a fuck. Do we like Santa Claus? [00:47:34] Speaker B: Do we like Santa Claus? [00:47:36] Speaker C: That is a complicated question. [00:47:39] Speaker A: So did you do Santa Claus with your kids? [00:47:43] Speaker C: So the grandparents did Santa Claus with my kids, but my kids never. I mean, Morgan believes that dragons live in her yard, but she doesn't really do Santa Claus. Like, they know that Santa Clau is not a thing now. We have an Easter alien, and that is a thing, like, 100%. But I don't know, man. It's. It's super complicated because, like, you're telling your kids to believe in things that, like, aren't real and giving credit to something magical when really, like, it's people working hard and doing things. I don't know. It's weird. [00:48:18] Speaker B: So here's how I did it with my kids is you cannot escape. Santa is part of the culture. So they know who Santa is. They watch all the stupid Santa movies that, you know, exist and blah, blah, blah. I didn't ever label gifts as from Santa. I don't talk about Santa. I don't do the you better be good, or Santa's not gonna bring you any presents. We don't have Elf on the Shelf. Like, I don't do Santa in that way. But if they want to talk. Like, if they want to talk about Santa, if they want to leave cookies out for Santa, I don't care. Like, I'm gonna let them do that. They're. They're little kids. They're playing with their imagination. It is what it is. But you better believe every single one of those gifts under the tree is labeled, from mommy, from daddy, from grandma. Like, we were the effort of giving this gift for you. I'm not gonna pretend that some imaginary whatever did all that hard work. [00:49:14] Speaker C: Yeah, we don't do that either at my house. [00:49:17] Speaker B: Yes. [00:49:18] Speaker C: So. [00:49:18] Speaker B: And then what I found in doing our holidays in that way was that it allowed for their kind of natural developmental State to be what drove all of our holiday. You know, their understandings of it. So when they were really little. [00:49:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:36] Speaker B: They would participate in the cultural aspects of Santa to a degree. And then when they got a little bit older, you know, we would just have those conversations. They'd be like, literally, though, like, what is Santa? And, like, is Santa real? And they would just ask me, and then I would just, you know, you play the. You go, well, what do you think? Well, what do you. Well, tell me what you think about that. [00:49:55] Speaker C: That's. [00:49:55] Speaker B: You know. And then they just came to the conclusion on their own. They're like, yeah, no, I don't think there's a real man that, like, literally comes to be. I'm like, I think you're right. Like, trust yourself. Trust yourself. You know? [00:50:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. What did they. They didn't get Hanukkah Harry mixed up with Santa Claus when he came by, right? Or. [00:50:18] Speaker B: No. No, they did not. [00:50:20] Speaker A: That's not a real thing. I just made that up. [00:50:22] Speaker B: That's hilarious. [00:50:23] Speaker A: It's terrible. Yeah. No, fair enough. Fair enough. I. I'm the kind of person. I like shows, I like pageantry. I like silly things. I don't like ritual and tradition, though. I don't think that's a good reason to do things just because. Oh, that's tradition. It's like, fuck that. You know? Like, is it a good idea? Does it bring anything of value? Then we're gonna keep doing it. Right. You know, I don't. I don't go to temple on Yom Kippur. I don't care. I don't fast, either. There's no reason for it. Right. So I, however, think that Santa Claus sounds like fun, but. Yeah, I don't like this whole, like, training kids to believe in God kind of dealio. I think it's silly. And I don't know that I would do Santa Claus with my kids if I ever had them. You know, I don't know. Easter Alien is fun because it sounds like Morgan made that up herself. [00:51:06] Speaker C: She did. And that's the thing. Like, I let my kids kind of create their own mythologies. And then it was like, okay, if this is what we're doing, we're gonna do it. Like, there's no reason to. I don't know. And the other thing is, like, you know, with presents and stuff like that, like, you know, sometimes times are hard and things like that, my kids don't think that their presence just magically appear from some person. Like, they know that, like, that matters, and it was with love. And so they kind of respect their presence, like, a little more, you know what I mean? As much as any kid actually can. [00:51:42] Speaker B: Because what's funny is back when in the earlier years of, like, some of my. My older kids, when they were younger and we were still Catholic, we. We would do St Nicholas Day. And to me, that was more closely associated with this sort of in totally entirely made up tradition of like some mysterious person leaving you gifts. More so than we would do on Christmas. Like, Christmas, those gifts came from mom and dad. [00:52:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:52:10] Speaker B: But we did do St Nicholas Day on December 6, and they would leave their shoes out, and then in the morning there would be chocolates and oranges in their shoes. [00:52:18] Speaker C: That's. [00:52:18] Speaker A: Yeah, it's hard, it's harmless. And it doesn't take away from the fact that mommy and daddy bought these presents with their hard earned money. Because they love you, you know? [00:52:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:52:26] Speaker C: I think the love matters. I don't know. But I'm weird. [00:52:28] Speaker B: I just. I just never. The thing that bothered me the most, always, even when I was Kathleen, this is why I look back and I'm like, I think I was never really, like, fully bought into the whole. Clearly, right. Because I'm not religious anymore. But, like, there were pieces of me, like, authentic pieces of me that were always present even when I was in that, like, structure. And one of them was that I could never bring myself to fully accept. Two different things. One, this story of being watched all the time, I hate, like, personally, like, that just. I was like, that is actually gross and creepy. And I. I don't know. Like, I see maybe there's some kids that. That is, like, harmless or their brain filters it out. I'm not that way. And so. And I can't guarantee which of my kids would have, like, like a psychological structure in their brain that would be safe to do that too, and which one of them that would be traumatizing. Because for me, it was traumatizing. And so I was like, well, I'm not gonna traumatize my kids and make them feel like they're constantly being watched. So that was one of them. And then two was this concept that you only get gifts if you are quote, unquote, good. And I hated this feeling of, like, conditional love and performative goodness and all of that. And I never wanted to teach my kids that. So those were two of the main reasons why I rejected Santa for always. Like, when I was raising my kids, I was, like, not gonna buy into that and make them feel any of those feelings. [00:53:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that critical thinking is really fucking important. It's what allowed me to break free of religion. Just looking at the facts and going, okay, my conclusion is that this isn't true and I don't have to do this, and I'm okay. And I think that it's important to teach your kids that. That being said, I do think there's a middle ground where I think that, you know, kids should be allowed to be kids. But doing Santa Claus, that's not really letting kids be kids, is it? Right. It's this cultural sort of stratum that you're pushing them into and forcing them to conform to. You know, it is not the Easter alien that Adrian was talking about, which I think is delightful. [00:54:29] Speaker C: One of the other things I never liked, like, Jack never wanted to go see Santa or sit on his lap or anything, and I was never gonna make him do that, because telling someone that their personal space doesn't matter, like, if they're creeped out by sitting in someone's lap, like, that should be respected. I feel like. Like, that's just gross. Like, that. That that makes them feel like. Like their feelings aren't valid. Like, no, I don't want to go do that. I'm like, no. You know, like, the grandparents used to try to take the kids to, you know, Santa Claus to get the holiday picture. And I was like, he doesn't have to do that. Like, no, we're not doing that. It's just not a thing. [00:55:11] Speaker A: As someone who loves weird things, I think Santa Claus is great. Do I. Do I want to do Santa Claus with my kids? Probably fucking not. I mean, I don't know. I hate Christmas. Christmas sucks. It's awful. It's gaudy, it's loud, it's fake, it's stupid. And it's tinged with Christianity, so it can fuck off, you know? Listen, listen, listen. Jesus wasn't born in December. All right? You know, hate to break it to you guys, probably didn't exist, needless to say, but, yeah, not into it. It's stupid. Let's do Saturnalia. You know, fuck it. [00:55:40] Speaker C: Okay. [00:55:41] Speaker B: I mean, I, Like, I'm. If I'm anything, I'm a pagan, so I celebrate Yule and the solstice and all of that. And I'm super. [00:55:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:50] Speaker B: I mean, yes, I do. [00:55:51] Speaker A: Yeah. No, no. Cool. I mean, like, you know, I'm partial to the Norse mythology stuff, too. I like to say that I'm doing yule, but frankly, Odin and Thor aren't real deities to me, you know? [00:56:00] Speaker B: Same Like, I'm a. I'm. I'm a non D. Like, I don't worship deities. I just follow the seasons. And I love the mythology of deities. Like, I love the. I don't know, almost like the archetypal lessons we can learn from them. [00:56:16] Speaker A: Yes, we. We are cultural Norse pagans. Boom. [00:56:21] Speaker B: Okay. [00:56:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Like, when we're sad, we think of the gods. Morning, Balder. When we're pissed off, it's Loki all the way. When you're trying to be wise, it's like Odin, all father, give me rent, bro. You're not there, but, you know. Yeah, it's been a while since I poured out a beer for Odin, but, you know, because I. I didn't walk away from Judaism to fucking, you know, fall into another thing for no reason. But there's more value there because there's no divine command theory with paganism, you know? [00:56:47] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's more just like you can form alliances with these various deities in a way. [00:56:54] Speaker A: I mean, do we want to talk about Klaus, the comic book? Does anyone care? [00:56:59] Speaker B: I don't know. I wouldn't contribute much to that. So talk about it. [00:57:03] Speaker C: Go ahead and do it. [00:57:04] Speaker B: Do it, do it, do it. Because we got to talk about that name, Klaus. [00:57:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, let's talk about Klaus. So Klaus means obviously, Nikolaus. It's derived from Nike, which is victory. It means the glory of the people. Victory of the people, Right. But Klaus is a comic book by Chaos Magician and hero of mine, Grant Morrison. He is acclaimed. He's written a lot of good shit. He's written for DC Comics mostly, but he writes his own comic books, and when he does, he knocks the fuck out of the park. His book Super Gods is largely about how the superhero comics are their own strain of mythology and how the. He takes this. So there's this line from the Neil Gaiman sandman where Morpheus, like the dreaming, is in disrepair, and he's unconcerned. He's like, it doesn't matter. The stories always return to their original forms. And what Grant Morrison is saying is that, like, superheroes are just us expressing the same religious values that gave rise to Mercury, Pluto, Thor, whatever, you know? And he's not being too literal. He's not like, Thor is literally the Norse God Thor. He's saying it's. It's the same archetype, right? So here's the thing, okay? Santa Claus is fascinating because he is this older character. Maybe he's the Krampus. Who the fuck cares? Maybe he's the wild man as Philistine Siefker wants me to believe. But you know, in taking the character, this American idea of Santa Claus and grafting him onto the superhero comic tradition, you get something very new and different. You know, he's depicted as a wild man. He's exiled from his little Norse town. He's living off the land with a large wolf named. I think it's Lilla. It's been a minute. Basically he's living with this large white wolf and he sells furs to the town. And the town itself has essentially the. The Baron that runs the town has sold out the town to a demon that lives in the coal mine. And he has the people working overtime. He cancels Christmas. He's told by the demon that joy is not allowed in the town. They have to be unhappy and working non stop to free him. And Klaus comes to town and he's like, I'm selling furs. And they're like, fuck, fuck off, wild man. And he sees what's become of the town he used to love. And this being Scandinavia, the northern lights come down and they're like these cool fifth dimensional elves riding on them. And they bestow on him winter powers and he's able to summon giant snowballs. He has a huge axe. And now he has a train of wolves led by his beloved wolf, Lila. And it's pretty cool, it's pretty wonderful stuff. He battles the baron, he's chased. He's a bit like Robin Hood. They poison him at one point. But the big takeaway of the book is that Klaus becomes this. This hero, fighting for joy at Christmas time. He's bringing the kids toys to keep their spirits up. And the book really wants you to hate the prince. The little boy, because the Baron's son, because he's selfish. And he smashes all the toys he's brought. And because he's not happy, none of the kids in town are allowed to be happy. And when the demon is freed from the coal mine at the end of the story, it's the Krampus, of course, and he's screaming that he can't wait to eat the children of the town. They're bad and they have to be punished, right? And the big crux of the story comes when the Krampus gets his hands on the prince, who the whole story's been written as a little bastard. And he says, I will eat this one. This one is a bad child. Muah. And Klaus says, fuck you, there are no bad children. And he kills him. It's great. It's A wonderful thing. And it's really powerful too, you know, And Kremp has become a Krampus. Klaus becomes. He is a superhero at this point. He has a secret identity. He has superpowers, and he has a villain that he defeats. And what does he stand for? Joy at wintertime and protection of children. So I think this is a pretty cool book. Maybe a kissing cousin to Krampus, the Yule Lord. You know, the novel by Brahm. I don't know. There's not a lot of this. By the way, it's an independent comic. Again, Grant Morrison is a weird fucking guy. As I mentioned, he's a chaos magician. He's. He's Alan Moore's nemesis. For some reason, writers don't tend to get along, so. Whatever. But I think it's pretty fascinating. I think that as we move further away from Christianity as a culture, our traditions do sort of start to move back to what they once were. I think it's inevitable. I believe that stories are living things. I believe that we express stories through art. That is our medium of telling stories and expressing our spiritual beliefs. Right. And I say spirit abstracted from the Christian context. When I say spirit, I mean the totality of our lives and what we know, think, believe, and feel. Right? That's what spirit is to me. And we make art to share that with each other. [01:01:39] Speaker B: Love that. So this is interesting because I want to talk about another story entitled Klaus. And I mentioned this to you when we were first brainstorming this episode, and I told you about this weird movie that I saw. So this. This film, you can watch this on Netflix. It's entitled Klaus, and it's an animated film. It's not that old. It's, I think, 2019 or something like that is when it came out. So, yeah, there's. There's a youth, I guess you would call. I don't know, we would call him a kid. But anyway, so here's the story. So I'm just gonna summarize it. So if you don't want to watch this, spoiler free just like, skip ahead a few minutes. I'm about to spoil the whole entire thing right now because it's a really interesting story and I want to talk about it. So this story takes place in this super isolated town, like, way up in, like, the Ark, on, like, an arctic island somewhere called Smirrensburg. And there's like this centuries old, long feud between these families on this island. And in general, it just feels like a very miserable place to be and to live. And so the story goes, there is this youth, right? He's this, you know, young man, maybe older, teen, younger, 20s, or whatever, postal worker named Jesper. And he comes from, like, a sort of privileged, wealthier family, that side of the feud, if you will. And he encounters in the woods this mysterious, reclusive character named Klaus who lives alone in the woods. He's old man, and he is a toy maker, and he makes these beautiful handcrafted wooden toys. And so he encounters him out in the woods. And then I think. I can't remember all the details because I saw it a few years ago. But what I remember happening next is that he creates Jesper, then sort of creates this campaign where he wants access to these toys, basically. And so he creates this campaign where he tells all of the children in town that there's this guy who makes these beautiful toys, but he's not gonna give them to you unless you convince him that you're really, like, sad and that this toy will make you happy. And you need to give him a penny with the letter. So you need to write him a letter. Bring me a penny, and I will go deliver your letters for you, and we'll see if we can convince this guy to give you guys some toys. And so it's this long, elaborate thing, and I'm losing a lot of the details, but ultimately, what we get from this story is, first of all, we get some sort of origin story for this concept of letter writing. Like, why are we even writing a letter to this guy, right? So it's. It's writing a letter saying, you know, my family has this problem, or, I'm sad because of this, and having one of your toys would really cheer me up. Also, here's a penny, you know, as a sign of good faith. And, like, I can't pay you more, but, like, I, you know, I really mean it. Basically, it's almost like an offering. And so, you know, there's this whole thing. It takes a while for, you know, like, Jesper to convince Klaus of this. Mainly, Klaus is a recluse because he doesn't want to have anything to do with this feud and all of the, like, anger and the. And just grossness that takes place in major society. And what ends up happening is as a result of him slowly participating in this weird scheme, it creates a ripple effect of kindness. And it all started as, like, you know, he just. This dude Jesper, just, like, wanted these toys because they were also kind of, like, magical. He just wanted them. And then it turned into, like, it actually legitimately did make a change. And there was an. It was like an equalizer. It was the great equalizer, because no matter if you were wealthy or poor or from this side of the feud or that side of the feud, the process was the same. You write a letter in good faith, you give your penny, and you get a toy, and the toys are the same no matter what family you come from. Right. And so it did. It created, like, unity and a ripple effect of kindness in the community, and they healed as a result of this. So it's a very interesting story. And, you know, there's a few other things in there that were, like, you know, smattered. Like, kind of just nods to what our modern, like, mythology around Santa Claus incorporates. And it just was creating, like, some alternate explanations and origins of maybe this. This framework. [01:06:19] Speaker A: So kind of like McDonald's, right? With everyone getting the same toys. Right? Nah, I'm just kidding. Now that sounds cool. So kind of a socialist Santa Claus, you know? [01:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that's kind of what the takeaway was, truly. And it speaks to what you're talking about with, like, this greater humanity. [01:06:35] Speaker A: Right. [01:06:36] Speaker B: Concept of spirituality. Right. Just like, the themes of kindness and equality and all of that. [01:06:42] Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah. I think that I. Because that's the thing. Like, you know, I like. I like the terrible 1959 Spanish Santa Claus movie where Santa's fighting against the devil. Like, you know, and he's best friends with Merlin the magician, and he lives in a castle in space. Like, that's just horrible, horrible kitty schlock. But, like, that's incredible. [01:07:00] Speaker C: Is it slay Bells? [01:07:02] Speaker A: No. Wow. [01:07:03] Speaker C: Nothing worse than Sleigh Bells. [01:07:05] Speaker A: Slay Krampus. [01:07:07] Speaker B: Krampus. [01:07:11] Speaker A: Sleigh Bells is not on the level of Santa Claus 1959 Slave Bells is horrible, horrible, horrible, strange streaming schlock that we watched, unfortunately. [01:07:20] Speaker C: Yes, we did. [01:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Sleigh Bells is some terrible, stupid movie where I don't even know what they are. They're like these girls that, like. These ladies, I should say, that, like, to dress up like fairies and go take pictures of themselves and post them on Snapchat or something. Yeah. I don't know. I just. I mean. Yeah, like, that's the thing. Santa Claus lends himself to terrible schlock, you know, and, like, I think that it's because the character himself really is kind of hollow. Ultimately, it is just a cipher. [01:07:47] Speaker B: It's like you can take it in whatever direction you want to almost, because there's no real true origin for it. So it's very open to Interpretation. [01:07:57] Speaker A: It's like Batman. I mean, you can make Krampus a muscle bound Viking warrior, like the comic book behind me. You can make him a fat fuck who like, you know, shows up and eats cookies and gets drunk off eggnog. Or he can be a boring fucking bishop with a long beard, you know, keeping devils in line. It's not a big deal, honestly, you. [01:08:14] Speaker B: Know, or he can be a little elf. [01:08:16] Speaker A: Yes, be a little elf. But I. [01:08:19] Speaker B: The fact that he was called an elf, I just that part in that poem and then, and then we got, you know, like, where do we even get the. The origin of nowadays? You know, Santa has elves that work for him and work in the factory and make the toys. [01:08:34] Speaker C: Yes. It's like fairy mythology. [01:08:37] Speaker B: It just like screams of like the industrial revolution America. Like, lady. [01:08:42] Speaker A: Absolutely. I will say this book makes a compelling argument that elves were essentially just the remnants of indigenous people. If you went into the woods, you might get captured. And I don't know, what are they gonna do? They gonna eat you. They're gonna take you away, you know, and they just kind of like as the, the, I don't know, the Picts or the Saxons, as they dwindled or got assimilated, it became more and more of a legend. Oh, don't go in the woods, man. The hairy man's gonna eat you. You know what I mean? [01:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:13] Speaker A: I don't. I don't know how much validity there is to that, but it is a thing I do. So. Something I found compelling is that the Sami people up north, they had for millennia this ritual where they would capture a bear. They would kill it, and they would carry it up to the mountains and they would wear its fur and they would be the bear for a minute and they would eat its. Its flesh and it would release its spirit. And they only recently stopped doing it. But the Okinawans over in Japan, they had the same ritual, essentially. And there's. [01:09:45] Speaker C: Well, Native Americans have their skin walkers as well, which is essentially the same thing. [01:09:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that, that is cool too. That's a big deal. I don't want it. I don't want to denigrate that, because that's true. But the big thing is that we have evidence of the Sami people doing it. Hang on. Going back 50,000 years, because we found. We found an altar that was dated to that old. You know, that's freaking me. It is. And I mean, like, is that a precursor to these, these wild man rituals? These. These morbid little plays where they would capture the wild man, like In Kidu, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Right. They capture, bring him into town, give him a nice lady to civilize him, and then they kill him ritually and he comes back. Symbolizing the spring perhaps, right? I think so. I mean, there's something there. I mean, I don't know. I think. I think the Santa Claus is just the Krampus, but, you know, whatever. Krampus. [01:10:38] Speaker B: Krampus. [01:10:41] Speaker A: Campbell cites the evidence of bear worship in Europe from about 75,000 BC. Between 1903 and 27, archaeologist Emil Bachler excavated three caves in the virtually inaccessible High Altitude. There, Buckler found the earliest altars known anywhere in the world. Altars to the Bear. Two of the caves, Wildkirche, Savager, Wild Church, Wildermann, Liesloch, Wild man Cave, are 7,000ft above sea level. The third, Zach Dragon's Cave, looms 8,000ft in the Austrian Alps, notably where we have Krampus. The finds were dated at 75,000 BC at the latest, because the caves presumably could not have been entered during the Wurm Glaciation. So for a while they were just locked the fuck off until, you know. Yeah. Recently. Campbell says the caves contain flagstone flooring, which is fucking crazy. Benches, work tables, and altars for a bear ritual. This isn't, you know, I poo pooed this book, but this is. She's citing actual stuff here in Dragon's Cave. In Wild Man's Cave, walls of stone enclosed bins with carefully arranged cave bear skulls. Campbell relates some of these skulls had little stones arranged around them. Others were set on slabs. One, very carefully placed, had the long bones of a cave bear placed beneath its snout. Another had the long bones pushed through the orbits of its eyes. Both skulls still had two vertebrae attached. And Adrian, going back to what you said, Native Americans, they had the same fucking thing. They had two vertebrae left there. It's very weird. [01:12:15] Speaker C: It's all over. Like, almost every old culture has some sort of mythology where they wear the skin of the animal and take on its attributes. It's phenomenal. [01:12:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, like, you know, it was a Neanderthal thing, but the CRO Magnon were doing it too. 30,000 BC, they found another one and they even found, which is crazy, they found one of these ritual sites where they had killed a Neanderthal as if he was a wild man. So I don't know. That's pretty. That was near France, I believe, and one of the oldest things we found. Curses. I think I lost it. It doesn't matter. It's like a hundred Thousand years old. And it's a cave painting of a shaman with deer antlers, you know, and like a bear. A bear, Not a bear, like animal pelts and stuff. It's. [01:13:05] Speaker B: Yeah, this. [01:13:06] Speaker A: This kind of thing goes back really far. You know, Krampus is just like whatever, you know what I mean? It's just like, it's just another one of these. So I think it's in this book. I don't know. I have a lot of books. [01:13:16] Speaker C: That's not a bad thing. [01:13:17] Speaker B: Well, I think what we're seeing here is, you know, if you were. I spoke about it earlier. If you were to kind of draw some sort of a timeline and figure out what the through line is. So much of it has to do with essentially how humanity is dealing with the forces of nature. [01:13:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:13:42] Speaker B: And this very harsh winter experience that we have to somehow figure out how the. To survive it. And so, you know, starting with this, you know, concept of taking on the attributes of, you know, they would observe these bears and be like, well, bears can fuck up a winter. Like, let's. Let's be a bear then, because that's how we'll survive. And then obviously not to mention the actual resource itself of the bear meat and the fur to keep them warm and all of that. But yeah, it almost. It all kind of just starts there with just this concept of how do we survive the harsh reality of the forces of nature and how that concept evolved over time. [01:14:28] Speaker A: What I'm wondering is what the is the deal with goats? Because, like, you know, like, I have this picture of Father Christmas riding a goat. You know what I mean? Like in the Hellboy story, Krampusnacht, where Hellboy basically goes to Krampus's house. He gets an invitation after Krampus goes to a church and throws things around. And Hellboy goes, and he's just an old man. And he's like, hey, so what's going on? He's like, I'm the Krampus. He's like, yeah, I know you sent me this. This picture of yourself, but this doesn't look like you. He's like, yeah, I know. He's like, I take the children away. He's like, okay. And then. And then Krampus starts throwing children's bones at him. Hellboy's kind of like. Because Hellboy's not like. He doesn't try to fight you at first. He's like, what's your problem? What are you doing? Can you leave? Can you stop it? Can you stop being a vampire or something? Whatever And Krampus is kind of like, can you send me back to hell? I don't want to live anymore. I miss. I miss the brimstone and the warmth of pandemonium. And now I'm in this cold place forever. Hellboy's like, I'm trying. He's, like, shooting him. He's punching him. And Karapus keeps attacking him and screaming, kill me. And then finally, one of the children, one of the ghost children, gives him a little knife, and he kills him with it. And then the Krampus is like, no, something's wrong. And he becomes a little goat and runs away. And, like, the conclusion that Hellboy's dad, Professor Broom, comes to is that, like, Krampus was a magic talking goat who thought, because people told him so, that he was a duke from hell and his job was to eat children. Like, what I'm wondering is goats. What the fuck? Because a lot of the. [01:15:53] Speaker B: These. [01:15:53] Speaker A: These dudes over in. In Austria, when they dress like Krampus, part of their costume are goat horns, you know, and, like, hello. I mean, you know, all the Krampuses have goat horns probably because goat horns look cool. The demons in my novels tend to have goat horns just because I like them. Really cool. Right? But, like, you have the Yule goat. And, like, I just don't get it. Like, there's this theory that the original Greek God was panic, and I don't know where that. I don't really know if there's any credence to that. But, like, you know, what is it about goats? Why are they an object of lust? Like, why are they a symbol of lust? Why are they associated with the devil? Adrian, you have anything as far as. [01:16:32] Speaker C: The association with the devil and our villainization of goats and stuff? If you look at a goat's eyes, okay, they do this, like, really weird thing. Well, honestly, like, that used to freak people out, and the only explanation that they could come up with was that they came from, like, straight from hell. Like, because their eyes were, you know, otherworldly or whatnot. Plus, they would live in uninhabitable places. [01:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:02] Speaker B: Yeah. I think part of it has to do also with, like, the behavior and the nature of goats. They're ungovernable. [01:17:09] Speaker A: Yeah. They're. They're tough, and they can climb really high, and they. [01:17:13] Speaker B: They eat everything, you know, they're just kind of mischievous and naughty. [01:17:19] Speaker A: They're goats. Yeah. [01:17:20] Speaker C: You know, that's just what they are like. Yeah, that's why. That's literally why. [01:17:26] Speaker A: Cool. Do we think that there's any credence to the king killing idea of Santa, like being tied to some ancient cult that's persisted throughout the centuries. And what does it have to do with that dude on the stick? Is that part of this? That Jew guy who got, you know, is that part of this or on the stick? [01:17:49] Speaker C: Oh, my God, Daniel, you cracked me up. You're something else, me. [01:17:53] Speaker A: And me. I did mention Balder. He's Santa Claus in Brahms Krampus novel. And I think that it's relevant. He was an important deity around this time of the year. And his cult persisted long after Thor worship had been stamped out of, you know, Norway and so on. But we'll talk about it briefly. So basically, Baldr was this gorgeous, beautiful God. Everyone loved him. He was a God of healing. He was a God of harmony and nature and peace, you know, which is in contrast to people's viewpoint of, you know, how people perceived ancient Scandinavian people before the coming of Christianity. Right. Just pretty sad. Viking was really a profound. They weren't all murderous pirates, you know. But that being said, Balder started to have nightmares, you know, that he was going to die. And he told his mother Freya, like. Or Frigga. Depends on who you ask. I think it's Frigga. But basically she was like, I can't lose my son Balder. Well, Loki was a little annoyed because he was this magical motherfucker. He was this fantastic bastard and no one was ever talking about him. No one gave a fuck if he had a nightmare. You know, you don't even. What'd you say? [01:18:57] Speaker C: I said, you don't even like him. [01:18:59] Speaker A: Nah, he's a. He's a. He's a bastard. So anyway, anyway, so, you know, Frigga goes on this epic, you know, mission. She asks everything that exists, every rock monster, animal and creature, every minor deity, elf or dwarf, please don't hurt my son Balder. And she gets a promise. We would never hurt Balder. He's wonderful. Except for Mistletoe. For some reason, Mistletoe is too young and she doesn't bother with it. I don't know what that's about. That's. It's a. It's an eccentricity of the ancient poem, you know. But anyway, so Balder gets the news that he's invincible now. So all the gods are throwing spears at him, they're stabbing him, they're shooting arrows at him. Thor's throwing Mjolnir at him, and he's just laughing and everyone's having a blast and what's Up. So there's this blinds God named Hodor. Hodor Hod. Depends who you ask, really. But, you know, he's blind and he stays sitting off to the side. Loki comes up to him and says, hey, man, how's it going? Hodor's like, fucking blind. Let me. Leave me alone, you know. And Loki's like, hey, man, you don't have to be excluded from the festivities, you know. Fucking Balder, man. You know, he's like, yeah, he's alright. Loki says, here, I've made you this special dart, okay? It's real good. You're gonna love it. I will guide your hand and everyone will cheer it. What a great shot you are. Well, it's a mistletoe dart. So, you know, Hodor kills Baldur, of course, because mistletoe never promised to not harm Baldur. Baldur dies and all the gods are kind of horrified. What the fuck? We thought we covered this. We thought we conquered death here. And you know, Odin sends one of his sons, or in some versions, Odin himself, goes down to the world of the dead, Niflheim to the great hall of the goddess Hel. And you know Cate Blanchett in the Thor movies? And she says, give me. Give me Balder back. He's our beloved child. He deserves to live. We need him. And she says, I'll make an exception. All father, you know, if everything that lives will cry for Balder, I will release him. Well, you know, they try. Everything cries. You have a period of mourning. But there's one person who won't cry. [01:21:13] Speaker C: Loki. [01:21:14] Speaker A: That person is Loki in the form of a giantess. He morphs into a gross old lady because that's. That's who the gods see him as. And Baldr does not come back. You know, I think that, you know, obviously, you know, ca. You mentioned the Yule log. The Yule log was Baldur's log. It symbolized Baldur's funeral pyre. Which, of course, you know, I don't have to tell you that, but I'm telling the listeners. You know, there's a lot of weirdness about that story. As they're putting Baldur into his funeral pyre, Odin leans forward and whispers in his ear. And none of the other gods get to hear what he whispers. And then Odin takes his magical arm ring, Draupnir, and he. Every night, Draupnir would drop nine gold rings. And that was Odin's wealth, I suppose. He put Draupnir into Baldr's casket with him, and they burned it all together. It's It's a very strange story. I don't know what to make of it, but clearly there's some. There's an element of death and rebirth and the finality of death, but also hope because Baldr is one of the few gods who returns after Ragnarok when the world is reborn, you know, along with Thor's children, Magni and Modi. And I think that Brahm's decision to tie St. Nick or let's Santa Claus. Let's be honest here. St. Nick was probably created to steal Nicholas from pagans. I don't know. That's. That's a theory I subscribe to. It seems likely. I think that's a clever idea. You know, for what it's worth, I think that, you know, Balder himself is probably like, I did all this stuff and now I'm back and the world is miserable. You know, people are unhappy because we are unhappy, you know, at our core. [01:22:46] Speaker C: I think the use of mistletoe is very interesting because that's one of like the common things around Christmas. You hang mistletoe, people are supposed to kiss under it. It's supposed to mean love. But also it's deadly. Like if you eat mistletoe you will die. It is poisonous. It's poisonous, yes. Which. That's kind of a thing too. In your story. [01:23:13] Speaker B: We also have the Yule cat, which was this gigantic cat that would similar to Frau Pechte, basically just kind of like wander from house to house and check to make sure that you had warm clothes. And if you didn't, well, depends on which version of the story you're reading. And some versions you're getting eaten by that cat. In other versions just minorly punished. [01:23:39] Speaker A: But you know, I wrote a short story set in my Demon Land world where Krampus comes to Demon Land and I put Parcheda and the Yule cat, the old cats able to like block out the. Is able to co opt the knight so that my main character can't use his mystical sword to steal the knight's power to empower him. But I want to talk. I want to talk about the Yule. The Yule lads. I love the Yule lads. [01:24:02] Speaker B: Yule lads. Go talk about it. [01:24:04] Speaker A: Yeah, so they have fun names like Sausage Stealer and Milk Drinker and Pots Door Slammer. They're these little bastards. They're these little elves who come in and they giggle and they don't necessarily steal children. They have like a. An ogress mother named Gorilla and sometimes they're tied in with perkta but it depends where you go. All this stuff is regional, but the Olads have, like. They have poetry associated with them. They're in the cartoon show Hilda, which is. [01:24:31] Speaker C: They are. [01:24:32] Speaker A: It's a very wholesome, adorable cartoon set. [01:24:36] Speaker C: It's daughter has all the books even. Like, we're obsessed. [01:24:39] Speaker A: It's set in Iceland, I think. But. Yeah. No, no, no, the olads are great. They're really funny. And I wish we did the did them in America. They don't. They don't necessarily have any, like, traditions associated with them, but they're just part of this miasma of bizarre wintertime characters, right? And it's like, whatever, you know, wintertime characters, There's a lot of them. But the spring doesn't really have that, does it? [01:25:03] Speaker C: You know, I will say that all of the characteristics and what each of the Yulads represents are all characteristics of, like, what fairies were known to do as pranks and stuff like that. Like, drink the milk, slam the door. Like all of this kind of stuff. That's all like fairy mythology right there. [01:25:21] Speaker B: I also find it funny that, like, parents go to great lengths nowadays to make their little elf on the shelf do all that weird shit and, like, be super mischievous and, like, leave messes for their kids to find in the morning. [01:25:33] Speaker A: Right? [01:25:33] Speaker B: Like they're still around. Why. Why are parents going through the effort with this little fake elf on the shelf thing and then, like, making this elf. I've never understood. I don't do it and I never will. But it sounds like the elf on the shelf is all of the Yule lads wrapped into one. [01:25:50] Speaker A: Even. Even a spoon licker. You know, he's my favorite. [01:25:54] Speaker C: He would be Stubby. [01:25:56] Speaker A: Stubby steals. He's short and steals food from frying pans. Bowl licker. He steals. Bullshit. [01:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, they just sound like the Fae. Like, they do. Like, yeah, they're fairies. [01:26:07] Speaker A: I like that. There's one named Skier Gobbler. He eats the Icelandic yogurt. The skier Window peeper. Whoa, Dorsnik. Hey there, candle beggar. [01:26:16] Speaker C: Creepy as Santa Claus. [01:26:18] Speaker A: I like Candle Beggar. He steals candles, which are very, very valuable over there. Or they were. Anyway, it's funny. My little elf on the shelf back there who's hanging out with Santa Zilla. She's actually a Chinese knockoff because I wasn't spending $30 on a fucking tiny plushie. Makes me sick. All right, so is there anything else we want to talk about? We talked about my stupid. My stupid theories. We talked about the. The dumb bear ritual thing. It's not dumb. It's pretty great, actually. Oh, did any. Did anyone bother to read the L. Frank Baum? I didn't read it. [01:26:49] Speaker C: No. [01:26:50] Speaker A: All right, that's okay. That's okay. I like, list like 14 books and I read like four of them, so. All right, all right. So, yeah, so wrapping up, I'll just do my works cited. The Krampus and the Old Dark Roots and Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil by Alridinor and Son Tejarachi. Pretty cool name. Santa Claus. Last of the Wild Men. The origins and evolution of St. Nicholas spanning 50,000 years. Hellboy. Krampus Nacht by Mike Mignola. Single issue. Krampus. The O Lord by Brahm. And yeah, it was the Night Before Christmas by Allegedly by Clement Seymour. And of course, Grant Morrison's Klaus, How Santa Claus Began, which, you know. So, yeah, CA. Do you want to talk about your podcast? CA can be found. She's got a really cool podcast called Unlearned. Go ahead. [01:27:45] Speaker B: Yep, you can find us at the Unlearned podcast on Instagram, my personal page. You can find me at Embracing Divergence on Instagram. That's where all the happenings and things are being offered and discovered. [01:27:57] Speaker A: If you're on YouTube, links are below. Adrian is an incredible artist. She does take commissions. You wanna. You wanna. You wanna guess yourself? [01:28:06] Speaker C: I write for Horror to Culture magazine. [01:28:09] Speaker A: That's true. [01:28:10] Speaker C: And I have a horror film art society where we do art shows based on horror movies. So. [01:28:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Her link to her Instagram to connect with is below as well. Wherever you are, I'm King Loki. I go by Daniel Sokolov in the real world, though, sadly, I edit Wish Poetry magazine. Check us out. Winter Edition is dropping on the 20th shortly after this episode. So you know, it's a few days away if you're just listening to this at release. I also write fantasy novels. The Demon Struggle for His Infernal Soul is the first book, of course, but check it out. I'm also pretty active on YouTube these days. Death Wish Poetry Official. I make little videos about my writing process and just make just little announcements as well. Check that out. Or don't. But at any rate, I don't know. Love your demons. Write poetry, make art. Stay spooky, do the thing. [01:29:04] Speaker B: So if you've listened this far, that means you like us enough to please leave us five stars on anything and everything that you're listening to this on. It really helps us. Please. [01:29:12] Speaker A: You can also support. You can also support us through the Patreon. We'll be launching shortly for as little as a dollar, which will help us do this forever. So, you know, support. Support independent art. We publish a lot of niche stuff with Death Wish, so, you know, that's that. [01:29:27] Speaker B: Keep us alive. [01:29:29] Speaker C: Yes, please. Starving artist. Thanks. [01:29:31] Speaker A: I need to buy more Shadow plushies. All right, all right. [01:29:55] Speaker B: Sa.